BOWEN'S MOVIE HERITAGE
By
David Anthony
(Editor of the Bowen Independent 1992-2000
and co-convenor the Bowen Summergarden Film Festival in 1995, which was a
retrospective of the films of Ralph Smart.)
BOWEN is revelling in the spotlight as Baz Luhrmann films his international epic Australia with a stellar cast including Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman – and so it should – but it’s not north Queensland’s premier settlement’s first brush with movie fame.
Several films and television series have been shot, at least partially, in Bowen and film people have been known to fall in love with the place. It was only a matter of time before a filmmaker of vision like Luhrmann, would take advantage of the rich natural assets and friendly population at the top of the Whitsundays.
It is unsure if Dorothy Cottrell, iconic Australian author of The Singing Gold, actually visited Bowen, but she fell in love and married prominent Bowen identity Walter Cottrell. They later settled in Florida with Walter returning to Bowen after her death. Dorothy’s famous story, Wilderness Orphan, the heart-warming tale of a joey rescued from a cruel life in the circus, was the basis of Ken G. Hall’s acclaimed 1936 film Orphan of the Wilderness.
The B-grade American action film, The Secret of the Purple Reef (1960), starring Peter Falk and Richard Chamberlain, was based on a Dorothy Cottrell story serialised in The Saturday Evening Post.
This Bowen connection is not lost on the historically conscious who fondly remember Walter and his second wife Jess who were stalwarts of the Bowen Historical Society and Museum.
A scrap of newsreel film about the 1958 cyclone that flattened Bowen is stored in ScreenSound, Australia’s film and sound archive in Canberra.
A very little known 8mm epic filmed in Bowen in the early 1950s has recently been rediscovered in old trunk in Ben and Phyl De Luca’s Summergarden Theatre.
"Back when some of us were just old enough to own a car, we got together to make a film called Contraband," Ben De Luca said.
The subject matter was ahead of its time. Mostly filmed at scene little Murray Bay, a gang of modern-day pirates are involved in grog and drug smuggling. Ben and mates Gordon Jensen and Laurie Murphy got the money together and featured roles went to Murray Harriett and Ben’s brother Steve because he owned a boat.
"Film was very expensive in those days, especially colour which we used," Ben said.
He recently re-viewed the film and, though never cleaned up with a final cut, it captured some revealing scenes of Bowen in those days.
"Bowen looked like a typical bush town with narrow bitumen up the middle of streets and not much attention was paid to edging the grass footpaths," Ben reflected.
"Our town certainly looks a lot better today with beautification given more priority."
The film actually won an aware at the Toowoomba Amateur Film Festival despite its unfinished state.
Ben next foray into filmmaking was with the 1984 film, The Slim Dusty Movie, written and produced by Kent Chadwick and directed by Rob Stewart, which was partially filmed in Bowen. The Summergarden Theatre was the setting for a concert as it so often was when Slim toured the north. In fact, the stage in the main cinema was built at Slim's suggestion.
Ben even has a line singing out to Slim to town as, atop a ladder, he cleans the lights of the theatre’s signs. Other Bowenites will recognise old friends or themselves reclined in Summergarden's famous canvas seats in the concert scenes.
In a backstage scene Slim's entourage comment on an old Dusty Show tour poster on the wall. Ben still has this same poster, now laminated in his office.
Slim's mate and co-star Stan Coster, the late travelling showman from Manilla, included Bowen on all his northern tours, until his death. They catch up with each other in a bush scene.
Local cattleman and long-time friend of Slim's, the late Lew Williams, is given prominent billing for a wonderful scene where he recites humorous bush verse for Slim's entourage and Slim returns the favour by singing a song written especially for Lew.
Sadly, Lew died soon after the film was made adding poignancy to one of the film’s highlights and this is commented on in the documentary about the making of the film, Just Rollin’, included on the recently-released four-disc DVD edition of the film.
Just Rollin’ features footage of the filming inside and outside the Summergarden Theatre.
Before producing and writing acclaimed films like Malcolm, Rikki and Pete and The Big Steal, stills photographer David Parker was part of the Slim Dusty Movie crew. His photographs are still mounted at the Summergarden. A nice portrait of Slim posing outside the Summergarden adorns the cover of the Umbrella DVD box set.
Today the Summergarden Theatre is again playing a role in movie history. Baz Luhrmann is screening his rushes at the historic 60-year-old California-style cinema.
The pristine beauty of the Whitsundays captivated film people and eventually brought some of them to Bowen – a couple for good.
As English-born Australian filmmaker Ralph Smart flew over the Whitsundays while making war documentaries in Papua New Guinea and the Torres Strait, he yearned to see the countryside close up.
This did not happen for two more decades. Having scripted documentaries, comedies and several of Michael Powell's "quota quickies" in England in the 1930s, his film career took off in Australia after directing exciting war documentaries like Island Target (1945). He once had a small acting role in a scene with Peter Finch in Ken Hall’s patriotic documentary South West Pacific (1943).
Smart was the Australian producer for Ealing's international hit The Overlanders (1946). Following that success he wrote, produced and directed another timeless Australian classic, Bush Christmas (1947) remade in 1983 starring a 14-year-old Nicole Kidman in only her second film.
Bush Christmas's Blue Mountains scenery was superbly photographed by George Heath who previously lensed Orphan of the Wilderness.
Smart returned to England as a director of some stature, coming back to Australia in 1949 to do some script-doctoring on Eureka Stockade and to produce and direct another labour of love, Bitter Springs, a story of racial conflict during the settlement of the Australian frontier.
Pioneering Aboriginal actor Henry Murdoch, who had key roles in The Overlanders and Bitter Springs, is related to Bowen's Murdoch family. Sadly for Australian cinema, Murdoch quit films after Bitter Springs to work as a stockman in central Queensland. There Murdoch mentored a young Neza Saunders, the young protégé of Chips Rafferty who had been one of Ralph’s Bush Christmas children. Saunders, like Murdoch, preferred the bush life to a career in films.
With the advent of television in England in the mid-1950s, Smart became one of its busiest pioneers. His long list of TV credits included The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, The Buccaneers, William Tell, The Invisible Man and his proudest achievement, Danger Man, starring Patrick McGoohan as the spy John Drake.
When Danger Man was cancelled in 1966, Ralph turned to freelance scriptwriting. An opportunity to work in Australia again brought him back as the troubleshooting producer of the odd American-style action series, Riptide, starring Ty "Bronco" Hardin as charter boat operator Moss Andrews. Shooting, mostly at sea, took Smart from Bondi to Bowen via the Whitsundays where he had long wanted to visit.
Many Bowenites today, including Ben De Luca, will fondly remember Ty Hardin as a part of the Bowen community at that time.
They might not remember Ralph Smart from the Riptide years, but in the late 1970s Smart made Bowen his home, settling in a house close to pretty Rose Bay with son Robert and his family.
He chose to live in Bowen because he felt it was the most established town in the Whitsundays and it had a beautiful green golf course stretching along Queens Beach.
In 1995, the Bowen Writers’ Group staged a retrospective of Smart's work at the Summergarden Theatre with his Bitter Springs and occasional Riptide star Michael Pate as a special guest.
An important revelation was made at the first screening of Bitter Springs at the film festival. Ralph agreed to the event as long the Writers’ Groups would not screen Bitter Springs. Ralph literally had bitter feelings about the film which he believed had been sabotaged by Ealing producer Michael Balcon. Balcon insisted that Ralph rewrite the script to accommodate comedian Tommy Trinder and to replace the climactic violent battle between the Aborigines, led by Henry Murdoch, and the settlers with a corny happy ending.
Bill Jardine, president of the Bowen Writers' Group, convinced Ralph to include the film on the program by offering him to personally deliver a disclaimer before the screening. This he did, but after the film, amid the applause, Ralph leapt from his chair and completely denounced his own opening remarks. "I don't know what I was talking about," he said. "That's a great a film and Tommy Trinder was pretty good in it, wasn’t he?"
He then admitted he had been so angry with Balcon he had refused to see Bitter Springs upon its release – not until that cold August night in Bowen’s Summergarden Theatre 45 years later.
A footnote to the Smart retrospective was a brief reunion between Matlock Police stars Michael Pate and Grigor Taylor. Taylor starred in the 1980s television series Butterfly Island filmed in the Whitsundays. Taylor was to make Bowen his home where for several years he wrote and directed a series of well received revues satirising local, state and national issues.
Pate returned to Bowen a couple of years later to record an interview with Ralph Smart to be archived in ScreenSound.
On Australia Day 2000, Ralph received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) "for service to the development of the Australian film industry".
Ralph Smart's son Robert, who still lives in Bowen, had worked as a double for one of the children in Bush Christmas and as a teenager he co-scripted a 1959 episode of The Invisible Man for his father.
Playwright Alex Buzo (who, without credit, had co-scripted Tony Richardson’s Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger as well adapting his own plays for television) visited Bowen to conduct a writers' workshop and readings in 1998. After a reading at an Airlie Beach resort, he had a chance meeting with Sandra Lee Paterson, who had appeared in his play, Tom, in Melbourne in 1972.
Paterson was working in Airlie Beach as a dialogue coach for the cast of Tales of the South Seas, being filmed around the Whitsundays at the time.
Much to the surprise of locals, some filming for this series took place in Bowen.
Buzo’s then work-in-progress, A Dictionary of the Almost Obvious, included some amusing references gleaned from his Bowen visit.
It is about time Bowen became a locale for a major full-scale production. It deserves the honour and future filmmakers will be encouraged to rediscover the town known as the "Gem of the Coral Coast".
It's a shame that Ralph Smart passed away aged 92 in 2001. It would have been nice to have engineered a meeting between him and Nicole Kidman during the filming of Australia. Nicole appeared in the Bush Christmas remake based on his famous original story. Her photograph appears on the front cover of the 1983 revised edition of Ralph's novelisation.
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Compiled for Baz the Great
Copyright