by Stephen Vagg
We’ve written a few pieces about the oeuvre of FW Thring, Australia’s most prolific filmmaker of the early 1930s, a man whose output was variable, but he had a go and everything he did is worth watching from a cultural point of view at least. Sometimes, admittedly, that’s the only thing to make it worth watching – A Co-Respondent’s Course (1931) being Exhibit A.
This was a short feature, clocking in at a cool 40 minutes, that was released in cinemas as a support to Thring’s feature length comedy Diggers. That was an adaptation of a popular Pat Hanna stage show about soldiers in World War One; A Co-Respondent’s Course is an original for the screen (so far as we can tell). It’s a light comedy about a solicitor, James Lord (John D’arcy), who is in love with Nellie O’Neill (Donalda Warne); she tells him she is going away for a week with her friend May (Patricia Minchin) to Portsea (a town best known to non-Victorians for being the place where Harold Holt drowned: it’s sort of a playground for wealthy Melbournians). Nellie gets the dates wrong and goes a day early, and James starts to worry that she’s cheating on him. At the same time, one of his clients worries that his wife is unfaithful. The two men hire three wacky private detectives to spy on the women and shenanigans ensue, but all resolves happily.
The script was written by Monty Grover, an experienced journalist and occasional playwright. It was directed by E. A. (Eric) Dietrich-Derrick, a German who’d emigrated to Australia a few years earlier and who had impressed Thring because he had worked in the European film industry. He would later direct another featurette for Thring, The Haunted Barn, but seems to have drifted away from filmmaking after that.
We’re not sure why Thring thought A Co-Respondent’s Course would make ideal film material. He did go to the theatre a lot, which at the time (and now) tended to show a lot of light marital comedies about the chattering classes, who made up a large chunk of the theatre going audience and liked to see their issues (money, infidelity) reflected. So, presumably he was comfortable with this sort of tale. Maybe he just wanted to make a film and the script was around, and shootable. Maybe he felt that a film set in a sophisticated upper class world was a useful counterpoint to the more earthy humour of Diggers. Maybe, he was interested in divorce. Thring’s biographer Peter Fitzpatrick suggested that the producer had a crush on Donalda Warne – maybe he thought the film would be a good vehicle to launch her (she would later appear in The Haunted Barn and His Royal Highness before heading off to England). According to Fitzpatrick, the director also had a crush on Warne, which may explain why she runs around in a swimsuit a lot. Incidentally, Thring had a cameo in the film but ordered he be cut out after seeing himself on screen.
The story of A Co-Respondent’s Course is weak –it’s all based on a silly misunderstanding that’s too easily resolved, and not enough happens for its running time. However, the photography is first rate, the location work in and around Portsea is fascinating, the young actors are attractive, and everyone tries very hard. A Co-respondent’s Course is a footnote in the history of early Australian sound cinema, but it’s not without interest.
Anyway, you can watch it here yourself.
