Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip with narration is about the link between illegal gambling and poverty in Sydney in 1938. The clip opens showing a title card with the words 'Slums, illegal gambling and SP bookmaking is a real and vital problem confronting the governments of Australia today’, accompanied by dramatic music. The next two shots reinforce the message with a poster placard and newspaper headlines. Sydney’s slums are shown as the narrator explains the social ramifications of illegal gambling. A series of shots capture bookmakers taking race bets on the street, including one from a boy, and an illegal game of two-up.

Educational value points

• Starting price (SP) betting, seen in the clip, refers to the practice of taking bets at fixed odds. Although SP betting at licensed racetracks was legal, The Gaming and Betting Act 1912 made it illegal to conduct SP bookmaking, often referred to as 'backyard’ betting, in public places such as hotels or on the street, and led to considerable police corruption. SP betting remained illegal in all Australian jurisdictions in 2007.

• SP bookmakers, commonly known as SP 'bookies’, are seen using telephones and radios in the clip, highlighting how this equipment made it easier for the bookmaker to access on-course prices. Prior to the introduction of radios and telephones, coloured flags were used to signal prices from within racetracks to off-course SP bookmakers.

• The narrator asserts that illegal gambling directly affected the lives of children living in Sydney’s slums. He argues that the children living in the slums are 'given no chance for the future …’ and that gambling on the streets is a direct cause of their squalid living conditions. The narrator emphatically states that the children 'are the real sufferers of the starting-price evil’.

• The clip shows a game of two-up, an Australian gambling game that was illegal at the time. In two-up, two coins are placed tails-up on a flat board called a 'kip’ or 'paddle’. The ringer (in charge of the two-up ring) calls 'Come in spinner’, and the spinner (player with the coins) tosses the coins. Bets are made on whether the coins will land on heads or tails. Legislation passed in 2005 allows two-up to be played legally on Anzac Day only because of its significance to Australian soldiers who played it during the First World War.

• The narrator uses emotive and sensationalist language during the clip. He describes SP bookmakers as 'bloodsuckers’ and 'parasites of the turf’, while children are likened to 'birds torn by the talons of a thousand vultures’. SP betting is described as something that 'lives and grows like a cancer …’. This style of commentary clearly conveys the polemical perspective of the clip as well as promoting a sense of immediacy and engagement with the action.

• Although the clip is taken from a newsreel, some of the scenes have clearly been staged to dramatise its message. A group of men are shown placing bets with an SP bookmaker, while a 'vigilant watcher’, popularly known as a cockatoo, keeps a lookout in a doorway. A child places a bet with an SP bookmaker and a game of two-up is conducted on the streets. These filmic techniques of reconstruction and re-enactment provide context and a sense of drama.

• The clip is taken from a newsreel made in 1938, when newsreels were a major source of information for Australians. Before the introduction of television in Australia in 1956 the newsreel was the only audiovisual medium available for reporting major events such as sport, entertainment, disasters and discoveries. They were usually shown in cinemas before the main feature, but some small cinemas ran newsreels exclusively.

• The newsreel was produced and directed by Rupert Kathner (1904–54), who established Australia Today in the late 1930s as an alternative to the established newsreels Cinesound and Movietone in order to report on and document the social issues of the day. Kathner made short films and newsreels throughout the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s and also completed five feature films during his career, the most famous of which was The Glenrowan Affair (1951).