by Stephen Vagg
Our series on dodgy foreign movies using Australian stories looks at the Rank Company’s Robbery Under Arms.
Once upon a time, Rolf Boldrewood’s bushranging saga Robbery Under Arms, originally published in the 1880s, was the most blue-chip piece of IP in Australian showbusiness. For those who don’t know, the story focuses around two brothers, Dick and Jim Marston, drawn into a life of crime by their shifty dad Ben and the dashing bushranger Captain Starlight. They have various adventures, including several robberies, a romance with some sisters, Kate and Jeanie Morrison, a horse race, and battling police and really nasty bushrangers, with most of the law-breakers winding up dead by the final chapter.
Robbery Under Arms is far from a perfect novel – it has this irritating moralistic tone, and goes all over the shop with various subplots, extraneous characters and repetitive story strands. However, it is full of great stuff: exciting action sequences (horse races, massive cattle theft, sieges, home invasions, shoot outs), colourful characters (Starlight, his Aboriginal sidekick Warrigal, the vengeful Kate Morrison) and settings (the goldfields, the bushranger hide out), and is grounded in true life historical inspirations (Harry Redford, Captain Midnite, Frank Gardiner, etc). The book is a gift to an adapter because it’s got dollops of terrific material, but you don’t have to be faithful because you shouldn’t be faithful. Different versions of the story over the years have changed who lives and dies at the end, who is “good” and “bad”, who gets more emphasis in the story – and that’s fine as long as the adapter has an overall vision of how they want to interpret the story.
Robbery Under Arms was adapted into to a hugely popular 1890 stage version by Alfred Dampier and Garnet Welch, which in turn was revised many times (Professor Richard Fotheringham edited the definitive account of this work). There were film versions in 1907 (two of them), 1911, 1920, 1957 and 1985, as well as for Australian and British radio in the 1940s and 1950s, and Australian TV in 1985. There would’ve been more film versions, if not for the New South Wales government slapping a ban on bushranging films in 1912 (the boring 1920 version – seen below – managed to get around this).
In particular, the ban stymied plans for Ken G Hall of Cinesound to make his version of the novel – he announced plans to make it for almost twenty years (early 1930s until 1952) but could never get the deal done. Hal Roach was going to film a version of Robbery Under Arms in Hollywood but got scared off by potential legals and instead came up with the Australian-set Captain Fury (1939).
In the late 1940s, film rights to Boldrewood’s novel passed to the British Rank Organisation. Ealing – a production company financed by Rank – thought about making a movie version immediately after the success of The Overlanders, for which various directors were mooted over the years (Harry Watt, Ralph Smart, Hall again) but there was always some factor to stop things: restrictions on the raising of finance, unavailability of studio space, the financial failure of Eureka Stockade and Bitter Springs, other films taking priority, Ealing leaving Rank, etc.
However, in 1956 Rank decided to make the film due to two main reasons: (a) the studio’s determination around that time to combat the threat of television by making more films overseas on location (eg Ferry to Hong Kong, Windom’s Way, The Wind Cannot Read, Campbell’s Kingdom, Across the Bridge, The Spanish Gardener, Seven Thunders); (b) Rank’s success with the Australian themed A Town Like Alice, produced by Joesph Janni, directed by Jack Lee and starring Peter Finch – all three men would work on Robbery Under Arms, along with many other cast and crew from Alice.
The movie was filmed in early 1957 in Australia and England, and was released to theatres later that year. Critical and commercial response was unenthusiastic, although it played on television so often and so long, we assume that the film eventually went into profit (though one never knows without looking at the accounting ledger, and even they don’t always tell the truth).
I’ve got to admit, I have a soft spot for the 1957 Robbery Under Arms, in part because of watching the aforementioned television showings when I was growing up. There are many things to admire about it, such as the photography, location work, and the sheer novelty of it being a big budget movie shot in 1950s Australia. It contains a genuinely sensational bank robbery sequence, and the final shoot-out has visual flair. It’s sweet to see all these English actors strutting around like they’re in a Western, complete with saloons, shoot outs and lynchings, and I’ve got a fondness for the Rank contract players from this period – I recognise that, Finch aside, they weren’t among the top level acting talent in Britain, but it’s fun to see Roland Lewis and David McCallum as the brothers, Maureen Swanson and Jill Ireland as the sisters, and Vincent Ball as their goody-goody neighbour. I love that McCallum and Ireland – who make a cute couple on screen – fell in love during the shoot and got married shortly afterwards (to the surprise of her then-current boyfriend, Richard Lyon).
But Robbery Under Arms is not a very good movie. There’s good stuff in it, but it is full of simple script flaws (WP Lipscomb, Alexander Baron and Richard Mason are credited as writers and I gather Janni and Lee rewrote it as well). These can be summarised into three main categories:
a) The star could have been cut out of the film.
In 1957, British film exhibitors voted Peter Finch among the top ten biggest box-office draws in the country, regardless of nationality (due to A Town Like Alice, The Battle of the River Plate, and The Shiralee), and it is doubtful Robbery Under Arms would have been greenlit without him being cast as Captain Starlight. Yet this character could be removed from the final movie, and it wouldn’t have affected anything. Watch the film and you’ll notice everything Captain Starlight does could be achieved by other characters – he meets the brothers, discourages them from a life of crime but not really, steals the cattle, pretends to be a gentleman, we hear that he’s been arrested, we hear he got out of prison, we meet him again, he does some more robberies, he vanishes, he comes back to do more robberies, he dies. All that could have been done by the brother’s father Ben (Laurence Naismith) or the nasty bushranger, Burke (played by Larry Taylor).
This is in sharp contrast to the novel of Robbery Under Arms, where Starlight’s function in the narrative is clear – he’s an honourable bushranger who is hero worshipped by the brothers and has many fine qualities, despite having turned to crime. The novel (and play adaptation) gives us lots of moments of Starlight doing cool stuff, charming people, winning horse races, romancing Aileen Marston (the brothers’ sister), and being a much more admirable figure than nasty bushranger Moran (turned into “Burke” for some reason in the film), in particular constantly stopping Moran from killing and raping people.
That’s not in the 1957 version, where Starlight floats in and out of the film. He initially suggests that the boys give up crime, but later on encourages them to go back to it, and expresses nil concern when Jim is captured by police. His moral code is shown in just one scene – where he doesn’t steal from one of the poorer passengers on a coach – and that’s it. The novel uses the character of Moran constantly to demonstrate Starlight’s integrity, but the Moran equivalent in the film (Burke) isn’t that bad – he shoots a trooper during the coach hold up, but that trooper doesn’t die and was going to shoot them; Burke later accidentally shoots a woman dead during a bank robbery, but again, it’s clearly an accident. Starlight doesn’t seem fussed about either incident, or when Burke and Dick Marston have a fist fight. (The only person to kill in cold blood in the film is Dick, when he murders a policeman to rescue a captured Jim.)
Furthermore, Captain Starlight has no romance in the entire 1957 film, even though the movie introduces Aileen Marston as a character in the opening scenes. I kept waiting for the two of them to cross but it never happens (Aileen does nothing in the movie as a result – she could’ve been cut out too). Peter Finch became a movie star romancing Virginia McKenna in A Town Like Alice, and various women in The Shiralee, but his Captain Starlight in Robbery Under Arms is utterly sexless. He doesn’t even flirt with a fifty worder.
The 1957 film of Robbery Under Arms needed to give Peter Finch something to do. Another fifteen minutes or so of proper subplots for Captain Starlight – a romance with Aileen, clashing with Burke, arguments with the brothers – would have worked wonders (and it wasn’t as though the film was running overlong – some of those endless scenes of cattle crossing rivers could have easily been trimmed to make way). Instead, the 1957 version of Robbery Under Arms has the perfect star for Captain Starlight, but has turned that role into a character with no romance, no moral core, no purpose in the story, no point.
b) The lead characters (Dick and Jim) have no motivation to turn criminal.
This is such a basic flaw that it’s bewildering that the makers of the 1957 Robbery Under Arms didn’t address it at some stage. The decision for Dick and Jim Marston to participate in the big cattle stealing at the beginning of the movie – a decision which they know from the get-go will blow up their lives, risk their necks and possibly destroy their relationships with their mother, sister, neighbour George and (in Dick’s case) girlfriend Grace – just… happens. Starlight warns them not to do it, but they do it anyway. For absolutely no reason. Just after we’ve seen Dick reunited with his adored girlfriend after a ten week break, and their mother specifically warns them that “your father is bad”, and Dick has said that he won’t get caught up in his dad’s antics. They do it anyway… just because.
It would have been so easy to dramatise why the brothers turn criminal. You could have blamed it on their toxic father who is bitter against the British government, or their misguided hero worship of Starlight, or have Dick do it in pique after George Storefield stops him from seeing George’s sister Grace, or establish one or both brothers have an urgent need for cash or adventure. The play adaptation cribs from the Kelly gang story by having the brothers turn criminal after a lecherous cop gropes their sister – the filmmakers could have used that as well. But they don’t give the audience anything.
Later on, Starlight tells the brothers that they “got into this life by accident” – but they didn’t, they specifically decided to turn criminal, for reasons that are never clear. At the end of the film, Starlight tells Jim “you went into it for adventure” but we never saw that either. Was a scene establishing this written and not shot, or filmed and not shown? Or did the filmmakers just stuff up?
c) Avoiding drama.
Look, there is drama in the 1957 Robbery Under Arms. As mentioned, there’s a terrific robbery sequence in which the mother of a small boy is killed. I also really liked the subplot involving “bad girl” Kate Morrison because the emotional lines are clear and understandable (she loves sexy Dick, and he’s attracted to her, but he really wants “good girl” Grace, and when Kate realises this, she turns Dick into the police) – and it’s given a valuable counterpoint in the Jean-Jim romance.
But the film is remarkable for the amount of drama it avoids, and/or doesn’t show. For instance, we hear about Captain Starlight being arrested while impersonating a gentleman but don’t see it, and we hear about him charming his way out of prison, but don’t see him do it, and we meet him having hooked up with dangerous bushranger Burke but don’t see their initial meeting. Why not see these scenes? Too expensive to shoot? Too exciting?
Why not emphasise the difference between Starlight and Burke? Why not give Starlight a romance? Why not have a big confrontation between Starlight and Burke over bushranging ethics? Why not have a confrontation between the brothers and their toxic dad about the latter dragging them into a life of crime? Why not do something interesting with the pursuing cop, like making him a baddie (as in the stage play) or merging him with the character of George, the brother of Grace who Dick loves – you might have had one interesting character instead of two dull ones. Why not do something interesting with the Aboriginal characters instead of just having them track and/or be there for decoration? (For instance, in the novel, Starlight’s sidekick Warrigal betrays him – they could’ve done that.) Why not have a confrontation between the boys’ dutiful mother (Jean Anderson) and their dodgy dad instead of just seeing them sit down to dinner together as if they’re a normal family (what happened to her resentment towards him established in her first scene?)? Why introduce Aileen the sister and do nothing with her? Why not have the lynch mob who want to hang Jim include at least one character we’ve met before instead of just a pack of extras? Why not have the boys’ mother or sister give Dick and Jim a serve for turning criminal? Why not have one of the gang turn traitor? Why not build the stakes at the end, instead of just having repetitive scenes of Jim wanting to get home to his wife (he’s with the gang, he wants to go home, he gets arrested, he is rescued by the gang, he wants to go home again, he gets arrested again). Why not have Jim at the final shoot out so that there’s some stakes in whether he will live? As it is, the gang are killed off one by one for no purpose, no reason – it’s not to help Dick because he’s dead, or Jim, because he’s snuck off by then, it’s just to kill the gang. This isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking – most of these things were in the original novel but they were ignored/discarded for the 1957 film.
Admittedly, Jack Lee wasn’t the world’s most energetic director – he starts the movie with Dick and Jim literally lounging on the ground in the hot sun and is overly in love with shooting action and characters in long shot. I wish Rank had assigned the job of directing to a Brit with a bit more oomph to their filmmaking, like J Lee Thompson, John Guillermin or Michael Anderson. But the main problem with the 1957 Robbery Under Arms lies with the script rather than the direction.
I’d love to know what went on behind these bad choices, especially considering the filmmakers could have learned from so many other earlier adaptations of the novel, and the project had been in active development at Rank since the late 1940s. Had the script been “noted” to death by various executives? Were scenes written/filmed but cut because of money/pace/censorship? Did people keep changing their minds? Sometimes, there are reasons why movies didn’t turn out well other than incompetence – but other times it’s just, well, incompetence.
It’s a real shame, especially as a more successful version of Robbery Under Arms might’ve encouraged Rank and Peter Finch to make more movies in Australia (Finch never came back here to work, even after the late ‘60s revival). The film is worth watching, especially for the cast and locations. But it’s also an opportunity missed.
