The Lee Robinson-Chips Rafferty Story Part Three: Walk into Paradise

by Stephen Vagg

Part three in our series of the 1950s films of Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty.

Previous articles in this series have discussed the emergence of Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty as a filmmaking force in 1950s Australia via The Phantom Stockman and King of the Coral Sea, pictures that managed to sell around the world and make tidy profits for their backers during a period extremely hostile to Australian moviemakers.

Robinson and Rafferty had been very smart, turning out adventure stories that played to their strengths: Rafferty’s screen presence, and Robinson’s experience with exotic locations and writing adventure stories. It made sense that they would continue this practice for their third movie, Walk into Paradise.

Their first two movies had been set in the Australian outback and on Thursday Island. Rafferty and Robinson decided that number three would be made in and about New Guinea, then an Australian colony, and an area both men knew well from their war service (Rafferty entertained the troops, Robinson was a military historian). The producers did a location scouting expedition in 1954, then commissioned Rex Rienits (an experienced radio and television writer we’ve discussed here) to write a script, although Robinson told Graham Shirley that he had to rewrite Rienits’ work to make it simpler.

Walk into Paradise (as the film became known) was the first Robinson-Rafferty movie to not revolve around a murder investigation – instead, it was a “trek” movie, about an expedition into New Guinea to build an airfield; it was also the first to not have a clear villain character.

However, there was still plenty of peril and action – the terrain, dangerous wildlife, hostile natives – which could serve as the antagonist. There was also a perfect role for Rafferty, as the district officer who leads the expedition, a sizeable female lead role (a doctor who joins him), and a love interest for said female (a crocodile hunter – a subject Robinson had made a documentary about).

Robinson and Rafferty were ambitious and hoped to make three films in New Guinea, and were thus keen to seek more stable sources of finance than the hand-to-mouth-raising-money-via-debentures operation of their first two efforts. In 1954, it was announced that the film would be called The Headhunter and be made with Richard Boone who had gotten to know Rafferty making Kangaroo (1952) – this never happened, although Boone and Rafferty would later make Kona Coast (1970) together.

Rafferty and Robinson probably thought that if international finance for their operation was to come from anywhere it would Britain or America. Instead, they received an offer from France.

Australia and France have an odd relationship historically – sometimes it’s been friendly (film festivals, World War One), on other occasions hostile (the Lebanon-Syria Campaign in World War Two, nuclear bomb testing). Although the Pacific Ocean was/is littered with French territories not too far from Australia (New Caledonia, Tahiti), they are separated by the great chasm of language and culture which has, traditionally, operated as a barrier to French-Australia cultural collaboration.

In 1955, French producer Paul-Edmond Decharme, best known for films such as Manon and Bluebeard, visited Sydney. He was interested in making French movies in the Pacific – where, as mentioned, France had a presence – and was recommended to Robinson and Rafferty, who had experience with film shoots in exotic locations. They all hit it off and the Australians wound up signing a two-picture co-production deal with the Frenchman.

They did not lean in to the possibilities of genuine French-Australian stories – something about, say, a person escaping from a French penal colony to Australia, (that was a thing in the late 19th century, apparently, there were stage plays about it), or how Australian troops helped New Caledonia stay Free French in World War Two, or an original story about, we don’t know, French and Australian treasure hunters or something. Instead, it was decided to do one “basically Aussie” film and another “basically French” movie.

The Aussie film would be set in New Guinea, Walk into Paradise, while the French one would take place in Tahiti, and was announced as Women of Tahiti or Vahini Tahiti, but would become The Stowaway (which will be covered in part five of this series).

According to Robinson’s interview with Graham Shirley, he and Rafferty put up 70% of the budget of Walk into Paradise (a reported 65,000 pounds) with the French providing the balance – the reverse percentages would apply for the French film.

It was, we think, the first Australia-French film collaboration. In hindsight, this was astonishingly far sighted of Robinson, and paved the way for future efforts in this field. In 1986, France and Australia signed a co production agreement – by 2023, there had been 35 official co-productions worth a total of nearly $300 million. (Robinson would also pioneer co-productions with Asia in the early ‘80s when he made Attack Force Z and Southern Cross).

French involvement meant significant creative adjustments to Walk into Paradise, including French stars, and a French director to film a French language version. Roles were rewritten to accommodate stars Françoise Christophe (who played the doctor), and Pierre Cressoy (the crocodile hunter), although the other two key parts were played by Aussies, Rafferty and Reg Lye (as a shifty prospector). Mercello Pagliero (an Italian who lived in France) would direct the French version, while Robinson would do the English one.

This sounds like a recipe for disaster, but in actual fact, it worked very well, according to Robinson. As a director, he appears to have been very much without ego, possibly driven by insecurity over his abilities to handle actors (although he recognised that there wasn’t much he could do with Cressoy’s limited ability). Also, it is likely that while in New Guinea the French crew would have deferred to Robinson’s considerable experience in that country.

Filming started in June 1955, and the movie was in cinemas the following year. Walk into Paradise isn’t a classic, far from it: Robinson and Rafferty could cobble together a decent story but never mastered script writing, and Robinson’s direction always seemed lethargic. However, the basic structure holds, something is always happening on screen, Rafferty is great, Lye is fun, Christophe is pretty, the location photography is superb and the whole movie is culturally fascinating, a rare Australian imperial adventure tale, our version of Sanders of the River (1935).

According to Robinson, the French took rights for Europe, South America and French-speaking Canada, while the Aussies had the rest of the world. He and Rafferty sold the American rights to Joe Levine who retitled the film Walk into Hell and made a big splash with it – indeed, it might have been the most financially successful Australian film released in America until that date, grossing over a million dollars.

So, what lessons can be learned from Walk into Paradise?

Play to your strengths. Again, Rafferty and Robinson did what they did best – remote location work in a visually spectacular area that they knew well, a star vehicle for Rafferty, a basic story that held.
Pick an identifiable genre but don’t tackle Hollywood head on. The “patrol” or “trek” movie is a universally recognised genre, and the rules/tropes of that genre are followed (tough leader, feisty female, scungy little dude who dies, hostile locals), but the New Guinea setting was fresh and uniquely Australian, as was Rafferty.
Try to improve. Walk into Paradise was another advance on their previous films – it had more money, even more spectacular locations, was in colour, and had a female lead with an acting background (their previous two female leads were models who’d never acted before).
Have a story that covers the basics. A role for Rafferty and a female lead, a beginning middle and end, a romance, some action. We would argue that Walk into Paradise didn’t get all the basics right – the movie would have been better with a proper baddy, and personal stakes to motivate Rafferty’s character, which had been there in The Phantom Stockman. Maybe these had to be removed in order to secure official cooperation from the Australian government. Maybe Robinson’s writing skills were getting a little rusty now that he no longer regularly cranked out adventure scripts for radio. Or maybe this was just a creative decision he made.
If you make an international co-production, pick a story that make sense for the involvement of both countries. This mostly worked in Walk into Paradise as audiences are conditioned to accept all sorts of people turning up in a “trek in exotic location” movies – and it doesn’t seem so odd that the doctor is French because the French have a long history in the tropics. They maybe were pushing it a little with the French crocodile hunter (sorry to offend any French crocodile hunters out there).
Also, if you’re making an international co-production, make sure you bring something to the table. Filming in New Guinea would have given Robinson and Rafferty a lot of “hand” with the French. This wasn’t so much the case for the movie shot in Tahiti, as shall be discussed…
Sign a good deal. Walk into Paradise/Walk into Hell made a lot of money in America, but Robinson only got the flat fee that he’d received from Joseph Levine. These things happen, but if Robinson had negotiated a better deal for himself, maybe some of the problems that followed could have been avoided.

After making three financially successful films in a row – and if you think that’s easy, then try making just one – Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty were about to encounter a lot of problems…