by Stephen Vagg
Ned Kelly was an unusually exciting bushranger – political, smart, visually interesting, cool final siege and death – who seemed to inspire an unusually large amount of cinematic misfires. There was the 1969 Mick Jagger biopic, the 1934 Henry Southwell film, the 2005 Gregor Jordan epic, etc. Perhaps the most shonky of them all is 1951’s The Glenrowan Affair.
This was from the filmmaking team of Rupert Kathner and Alma Brooks, a pair of rogues with a taste for big dreams and leaving investors disappointed; indeed, they were so rogue-y, their lives inspired the entertaining 2006 movie Hunt Angels. Kathner and Brooks made various films over the years, long and short (some of which Kathner did on his own), including Phantom Gold (1937), Below the Surface (1938), The Pyjama Girl Murder (1939), Wings of Destiny (1940), Racing Luck (1941) and The Glenrowan Affair; the latter was Kathner’s last film as he died in 1954. The cinematic output of Kathner and Brooks is commonly regarded as what is known in critical terms as “bad”. With The Glenrowan Affair – their most easily accessible work – being used as Exhibit A.
The movie had a difficult birth. It started with an altogether different Ned Kelly movie called Message to Kelly, which was going to be made in the 1940s by a filmmaker called Henry Southwell, who had turned out three earlier Ned Kelly movies (The Kelly Gang, When the Kellys Were Out, When the Kellys Rode). Southwell formed a company with Kathner to make the picture, raised funds, and started filming with Bob Chitty as Kelly. Chitty was a famous Aussie Rules player, who won two premierships for Carlton, one as captain.
Southwell eventually left the project, Kathner took over, but then was fired from the company making the film. Kathner decided to make his own Kelly film from his own script, and raised his own funds; when the Message to Kelly project fell over, Kathner decided to hire Bob Chitty to play Kelly in what became The Glenrowan Affair. Filming began in Benalla in 1948 and wasn’t completed until 1950. Rupert Kathner is credited as writer, producer and director, also appearing in the film under the pseudonym “Hunt Angel” as Aaron Sherritt – and an artist at the beginning of the film sketching. Alma was credited as “associate producer” and plays Kate Kelly under the name “Beatrice Kay”.
The photography is nice as are the locations; The Glenrowan Affair is not a very good film, but you can enjoy it in the right spirit, with all those fake beards, ham acting and out of focus photography. There were some recognisable actors in it: Charles Tingwell did the narration, John Fernside (tubby comic relief in many films from this era like Bush Christmas) plays a priest and Frank Ransom (an actor-stockman in movies like The Overlanders and Kangaroo Kid) is a cop.
Don’t bother watching if you’re not in a forgiving mood, but there is something endearing about The Glenrowan Affair. The enthusiasm and shamelessness of Kathner and Brooks, the fact that they got a movie made. Good on them.
You can see the film here.
