by Stephen Vagg
It’s always tricky to make a movie in Australia, but the people who deserve an extra medal are those who pulled it off in the 1950s, a particularly hostile time for local filmmakers.
We’ve written a series about the herculean efforts of Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty in making six features, but an honourable mention deserves to go to New Zealander Cecil Holmes, who directed two big-screen films, Three in One and Captain Thunderbolt.
In recent years Captain Thunderbolt has become one of the better known old Australian films because of a crucial discovery. For many years the only copy of the movie that circulated was a 53-minute one, truncated for television from an original 69-minute version. The latter was presumed to be lost, but then turned up in a Prague archive, one of the wonderful discoveries that happen from time to time in cinephilia; the story of this is told here.
The long version has yet to make its debut in commercial form, so for this piece, we’re reviewing the short version, a copy of which is at the National Film and Sound Archive.
Captain Thunderbolt is based on the life and adventures of the eponymous bushranger, who probably ranks equal with Ben Hall as Australia’s second-favourite bail-up bandit (both coming after Ned Kelly, who we don’t think anyone, even non-Victorians, would argue is number one).
The Thunderbolt story has many sexy elements – his cool nickname (his real name was Frederick Ward), his escape from Cockatoo Island, the sheer length of his criminal career, his marriage to an Aboriginal woman (Mary Ann Bugg), his death and rumoured survival.
Thunderbolt’s life had been dramatised numerous times over the years – a memoir from one of his accomplices, called Three Years with Thunderbolt, was turned into a stage play, which in turn was adapted into a 1910 movie by John and Agnes Gavin, a married filmmaking team who contributed several hits to early Australian cinema. You can watch that film here.
It’s not very good, to be honest, but it’s impossible not to have a soft spot for the Gavins, good solid carny folk who fought the good fight.
The 1912 bushranging ban – one of the most destructive and pointless pieces of legislation in the history of Australian filmmaking – brought an end to any more Thunderbolt films, though his life continued to be dramatised in books and on radio. By the late 1940s, the ban had been revoked, but by then, the Australian film industry was almost non-existent.
The film of Captain Thunderbolt came about due to an unusual combination of events. A New Zealand broadcaster called Colin Scrimgeour, had moved to Australia in the 1940s, where he started working in Australian radio and helped establish the Mercury Theatre company with such notables as actor Peter Finch, producer John Wiltshire, musician Sydney John Kay and writer Creswick Jenkinson. In 1949, Scrimgeour formed a company, Associated TV Pty Ltd, looking to move into television production and was discussing possible projects with a fellow Kiwi expat, documentarian Cecil Holmes. According to Holmes’ oral history with Graham Shirley (a copy of which is held by the National Film and Sound Archive), Scrimgeour raised the idea of making a feature film, and the director pitched the idea of a meat pie Western; Scrimgeour was enthusiastic and asked the director to come up with potential storylines.
Holmes read Frank Clune’s book The Wild Colonial Boys – a series of sketches on various bushrangers – and was particularly taken by the story of Captain Thunderbolt. Not only did it have plenty of action and intrigue, it also offered Holmes, who (like Scrimgeour) was a bit of a leftie, the chance to incorporate socially progressive politics – movies about outlaws are useful for this, because the heroes can always be forced into crime and rob the rich to feed the poor, the cops can be bastards, etc. Scrimgeour loved the notion and managed to raise the entire budget for the film – 15,000 pounds – from Benjamin Fuller, son of theatre entrepreneur, Sir Benjamin Fuller. Sometimes it can happen that quicky – not often, but sometimes.
Holmes enlisted many of Scrimgeour’s Mercury Theatre colleagues to work on the movie – John Wiltshire produced, Creswick Jenkinson wrote the script and Sydney John Kay did the music (although Peter Finch wasn’t involved, having moved to London by then – if he’d been around, he would’ve been perfect for the lead, and indeed later played a bushranger in Robbery Under Arms).
Captain Thunderbolt was shot in 1951, mostly on location in the New England region. Associated TV was the production company.
The truncated version of Captain Thunderbolt starts with Thunderbolt/Ward as a kid hanging out with his friends: two boys (Alan Blake, Jack Dalton) and two girls (Joan, and “half caste” Maggie). The five childhood friends grow up along different paths – Dalton (John Fegan) becomes a police officer, while Ward (Grant Taylor) and Blake (Charles Tingwell) are criminals, who are in love with Joan (Rosemary Miller) and Maggie (Loretta Boutmy) respectively.
Ward and Alan wind up in prison, where they are brutally treated by another cop, Mannix (Harp McGuire) (who acts as narrator for the film); they escape and become bushrangers, with Mannix in hot pursuit. Things build to a climax at a dance where Mannix and Dalton try to arrest Ward and Blake; a shootout results where [SPOILERS] Blake is killed but Thunderbolt/Ward escapes. Mannix lets people think that Thunderbolt died.
The film of Captain Thunderbolt is, even in its short version, very entertaining, benefiting from its location work, fast pace and a quality cast. Grant Taylor is very good in the title role – tough, scowly, capable of charm – as is Charles Tingwell as his BFF and McGuire and Fegan as cops. Rosemary Miller and Loretta Boutmy don’t get a chance to do much, although maybe their parts are bigger in the longer version.
The film is made with a lot of confidence – Holmes’ handling is very sure, especially considering it was his first dramatic feature. Captain Thunderbolt has the feel of a 1930s/40s Warner Bros gangster movie – that’s praise not criticism – with a similar pace, sense of social justice, storyline about childhood friends growing up to be criminals/cops. The satire of the rich is fun and the anti-immigrant rhetoric that the baddies spout is very striking for the time. The film does try to incorporate a lot of history – there were real-life rumours that Thunderbolt survived, Thunderbolt did have an accomplice when he escaped Cockatoo Island, there is an Aboriginal female character (only she, Maggie, is Blake’s girlfriend not Thunderbolt’s, and she’s played by a white actor in blackface… there was a limit to how progressive the movie could be).
The main debit of the truncated version of Captain Thunderbolt is the lack of characterisation: the romances between Ward/Joan and Blake/Maggie are perfunctory, as is the relationship between Ward and Dalton (who feels under-utilised as a character). Mannix does a lot of voice over – this may have been added for the shortened version or could simply have been screenwriter Creswick Jenkinson revealing his training as a radio dramatist. We can’t wait to see the long version. But even the 53-minute Captain Thunderbolt still contains plenty of action and flavour.
Captain Thunderbolt was only given a short run in Australian cinemas but had a decent release in Britain – there is always a market internationally for a strong bang-bang genre picture (indeed, Cecil Holmes told Graham Shirley that the film doubled its money within two or three years). It is unclear how much of this money was returned to the company that made it, Associated Television. The company was destined to only have a short life – it bought a movie studio, Pagewood Studios, which proved to be a financial millstone, and Scrimgeour was unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain a commercial television licence (the Federal government preferred to give these to friendly newspaper barons).Holmes went on to make a swag of documentaries but only two more dramatic features (1957’s Three in One and 1972’s Gentle Strangers) – he had an entirely decent career, it’s just a shame that there couldn’t have been more Captain Thunderbolts.
The author would like to thank Graham Shirley and the National Film and Sound Archive for its assistance with this article. Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are those of the author.
