by Stephen Vagg
Most Australians today wouldn’t have heard of On Our Selection – not the book, play, movie, sequels, radio show, or TV series – which just goes to show how fashions change, because at one stage – specifically the first half of the 20th century – it was the most flop-proof piece of IP in Australian entertainment. Steele Rudd’s original stories, about Queensland farmer “Dad” Rudd and his family, were best sellers, launching a whole flotilla of sequels; these were, in turn, adapted into popular stage plays, particularly one by Bert Bailey and Edward Duggan that debuted in 1912; the Rudd stories were filmed in 1920, which led to a sequel; the Bailey-Duggan play was filmed in 1932 and that led to three sequels; there was a popular radio series which ran from 1937 until the 1953. In addition, there was a whole industry of Dad and Dave rip-offs about the comic antics of yokel families including The Hayseeds (a series of movies from Beaumont Smith), The Waybacks (a play that was filmed), and Possum Paddock (a play that was filmed).
The franchise became less fashionable from the 1950s onwards – internal memos at the ABC during the 1960s were full of constant disdain for “Dad and Dave style comedy”; a sitcom version of the stories in the 1970s, Snake Gully with Dad and Dave was not a success. George Whaley did direct a popular stage revival of Bailey’s play in the late 1970s (with Mel Gibson in the cast), which he adapted into a 1994 film that was more popular at the box-office than is commonly remembered. Yet in the 21st century, Dad and Dave seems to have faded from view.
Why were the Steele Rudd stories (and their adaptations) so popular? Well, they were comedies based on truth, which always helps, as did the fact that they had rural settings, which would have had great appeal to country audiences, who seem to be, as a rough rule of thumb, more enthusiastic consumers of Australian content than their urban counterparts (and while the non-urban percentage of the population of Australia was 10% in 2021, it was 42% in 1911). Furthermore, Dad and Dave tales were, at heart, family stories, and thus had great universal appeal – everyone knows a family run by some blustering paterfamilias like Dad with an idiot son like Dave and a hot daughter with a troublesome love life, as the Rudd girls always seemed to have.
The 1932 film version of On Our Selection was the first dramatic feature film to bear the name of Cinesound Productions, the production arm of Greater Union Theatres. Greater Union was, back then, run by F. Stuart Doyle, who was very aware of the risks involved in film production, having seen a number of Australian producers crash and burn over the years during the silent era – particularly Australasian Films, with which Doyle had been involved, lost a total of £35,000 on the movies For the Term of His Natural Life (budget £60,000) and The Adorable Outcast (budget £35,000). So, when Doyle decided that he wanted his company to make sound features, he took a conservative approach to start off with – which meant low budgets and adaptations of top -quality IP. And in the early 1930s, there was little IP more appealing than On Our Selection, Bailey/Duggan’s stage adaptation of Rudd’s stories, which had been playing to packed houses around the country for almost two decades, with Bailey playing Dad. It would also be relatively inexpensive to make (with an estimated budget of £5,000), involving a basic set (a farm) and some actors.
Doyle handed the job of directing to his former assistant Ken G Hall and was rewarded when the resulting film proved to be a commercial blockbuster, making a reported £60,000 and playing in cinemas until the 1950s. The success of the film encouraged Doyle to launch a proper filmmaking program with Cinesound that endured over the next decade.
We remember not liking On Our Selection much when we first saw it – too hokey, stage bound and melodramatic, with Hall basically cut and pasting the stage play on screen (allowing for some location work, and shots of sheep and what-not). As a film, it’s certainly not as slick as the latter Dad Rudd films made by Ken G Hall. But as the years have gone on, we quite enjoy On Our Selection – if the actors are “stagey”, they all clearly know what they’re doing, some of the jokes still land, and of course it’s culturally invaluable.
The plot is really a series of various subplots centred around a “selection” in South-West Queensland owned by Dad Rudd (Bert Bailey): he owes money to his rich neighbour, old Carey (Len Budrick), who is determined to break Dad financially; his educated hot daughter Kate (Molly Raynor) is pursued by two men, the poor but devoted Sandy (Dick Fair) and Carey’s villainous son, Jim (John Warwick); one of his workers, Cranky Jack (Fred Kerry), has a mysterious background; there are comic visits from a parson (Arthur Dodds) and country dentist, who removes Dad’s tooth; Dad’s dim son Dave (Fred MacDonald) proposes to his girlfriend, Lily (Lilias Adeson); his other son, Joe (Ossie Wenban) causes slapstick havoc; Dave gets married to Lily and tries to borrow money from his father; Dad’s less hot daughter Sarah (Bobbie Beaumont) is pursued by the high-voiced Billy (Fred Browne), who Dad doesn’t like; Dad Rudd runs for parliament opposite Carey; and his horse wins a race. There’s also a murder mystery: Jim Carey attempts to blackmail Kate into “being with him” by lying about what she did in the city, and Sandy knocks him out; Carey later turns up dead and Sandy is suspected of the murder. The Rudds hold a dance, and a police officer turns up to arrest Sandy when (spoilers) Cranky Jack confesses that he killed Carey because the dead man stole his wife. The film ends with Dad and Mum happily watching the sun come up.
The melodrama murder subplot was added to the Steele Rudd stories by Bailey and Duggan in their stage play; it was a good addition, as it gives the piece some heavy meat and genuine stakes. Structure-wise, On Our Selection is iffy – the drought is over by act one, the subplots sort of come and go, it feels weird that Sandy heads off, nothing much is made of Dad running for Parliament: these things matter less on stage, where there are intervals to break up the action, but are more noticeable in the continuous narrative of a feature film.
Still, On Our Selection has a lot of heart, genuinely funny moments and a blockbuster performance from Bert Bailey, full of charisma, bluster, warmth, strength and sensitivity: he really was a terrific star. You can tell a lot about a country from its stage plays and movies, particular one that was as loved as On Our Selection, and the 1932 film opens a window on that time: the economic struggle, the stresses and joys of a large family, the pain of unrequited love, the irritation caused by visitors and in-laws, the intricacies of small town society.
It also says something about the Australian film (and television) industry of recent years why so few filmmakers of the modern era seem to follow the example of On Our Selection. We’re not talking about broad rural humour, but rather, the principles that underpinned the stories on the page, stage and screen: to wit, its affectionate if comic portrayal of working class battlers and family archetypes, its combination of comedy, romance and melodrama, its ability to be universal through specificity, its use of a murder mystery plot to hold the attention, its grounding of comedy in the harsh reality of life. These are all things that we believe would still speak to Australian audiences today but far too many filmmakers seem to be too cool for school to use them.
In 1918, Bert Bailey wrote an essay on playwriting which ended with this advice:
“Build your drama with concrete, damp-proof foundation of human interest. Place on it a two foot brick wall of characterisation. Strengthen it with girders of bright comedy, floor it with incident and roof it with good ends of acts. Papering the walls with the dialogue is easy. If you are a literary man, you can put a dado [decoration of the lower part of a wall] in the drawing room. It won’t make any different to the strength of the building.”
That’s as good as advice on writing as any out there, and it is all through the 1932 film version of On Our Selection.
The author would like to thank Graham Shirley for his assistance with his piece. Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are those of the author.
