Cinesound Productions

Cinesound Productions Pty Ltd was one of Australia's first feature film production companies. Established in June 1932, Cinesound developed out of a group of companies centred around Greater Union Theatres, that covered all facets of the film process, from production, to distribution and exhibition.

Cinesound Productions established a film studio as a subsidiary of Greater Union Theatres Pty Ltd based on the Hollywood model. The first production was On Our Selection (1932), which was an enormous financial success.

Establishment

Stuart F. Doyle and Ken Hall were the major figures involved in the establishment of Cinesound in 1931. Stuart Doyle was the Managing Director of Greater Union Theatres, and it was his desire to encourage an Australian film industry that provided the impetus for Cinesound to develop. Doyle appointed his then personal assistant, Ken Hall, to the position of General Manager of Cinesound, and also put him in charge as supervisor of production. In this role, Ken Hall directed all but one of the seventeen films that Cinesound produced and also handled the business affairs of the company. Hall continued to lead Cinesound until 1956.

Cinesound was one of four companies under the Greater Union umbrella, including Greater Union Theatres (the theatre arm), British Empire Films (distributors) and General Theatres Supplies.

Both Doyle and Hall were very committed to the notion of showmanship, which encompassed ideas relating to the type of entertainment the public would want to enjoy, and how to effectively publicise that entertainment to the masses. The publicity campaign for The Squatter's Daughter, and its star Jocelyn Howarth, was particularly imbued with this concept. They were also interested in creating a star system along Hollywood lines promoting the idea that Cinesound was a "little Hollywood". It was this dedication to showmanship that led to all but one of Cinesound's feature films making a profit from the first release, and all of the films eventually at least broke even. In 1939 Hall said that the budgets of Cinesound films were usually between ₤10,000 and ₤20,000, and estimated that his first fourteen films had earned ₤350,000 at the box office.

Profitability

The success of On Our Selection made Cinesound profitable early. In 1933 it reported profits of ₤4,010 and in 1934 these reached ₤8,800. In the financial year ending 1935, the studio stopped production for six months out of the uncertainty within the Australian film industry, and allowing Hall to visit Hollywood. This saw profits drop to ₤4,220 for that year.

On June 30, 1937 Cinesound reported a loss of £5,254 but soon recovered - in the six month period ending December 31, 1937 the company earned a profit of £2,788.

For the financial year ended July 2, 1938, the company made a profit of £7,647. However, the feature division was affected by an amendment to British film legislation which meant that Australian films no longer counted as "British" under the local quota. This saw the loss of a guaranteed market for Cinesound films, which normally sold for £6,500 - £7,500 to Britain, and forced the studio to make more broad-based comedies.

In February 1939 a company was registered, Cinesound Features Pty. Ltd., a subsidiary of Cinesound Productions Pty. Ltd, to produce the feature productions of the parent company. The directors of the new company were the same as Cinesound Productions: Norman Rydge, Edwin Geach, and John Goulston.

Profits for later years were as follows: 1940 - ₤2,821 1941 - ₤1,242 1942 - ₤5,018

Talent School

Cinesound established a talent school for young actors in 1938. Run by George Cross and Alec Kellaway (who acted in many Cinesound films), it offered training in "deportment, enunciation, miming, microphone technique and limbering." By 1940 the school had had over 200 students, including Grant Taylor and Yvonne East, who featured in Dad Rudd, MP (1940), plus Valerie Scanlon, Lorna Westbrook, Natalie Raine, and Mary Sinclair.

1940s

Cinesound Productions produced feature films until the Second World War, when it was considered that feature films were too great a financial risk to undertake. Cinesound then concentrated on producing the Cinesound Review, a newsreel that they had been generating to exhibit alongside their feature films.

After the war, a British producer and exhibitor named J. Arthur Rank bought a controlling interest in Greater Union, and used the theatre chain primarily to exhibit British films, whilst discouraging local feature production. Hence Cinesound never regained its place as a major local film producer, and Australian film production was almost non-existent for the next two decades.

In 1940 the Australian Government decided to channel news footage to the public through the existing newsreel companies, Cinesound and Movietone. In the same year Cinesound abandoned feature production for the duration of the war. By this stage it was estimated Cinesound films had earned ₤400,000 at the box office.

In 1942 Cinesound provided the operational base for the film unit of the US Signal Corps to prepare newsreels for viewing to American troops in the South West Pacific theatre of the war.

In 1946 arrangements were made with the commercial film distribution companies to distribute selected Commonwealth Film Unit productions in Australian cinemas on a commercial basis. Similar arrangements existed for the release of general sponsored documentaries produced by Movietone and Cinesound.

Other Australian producers were almost totally deprived of access to commercial cinema screens.

Despite the success of Ken G Hall's last feature, Smithy, which was backed by Columbia Pictures as a means of repatriating frozen currency held in Australia due to wartime restrictions, Greater Union Theatres decided not to resume post-war production through Cinesound.

Feature Films

• On Our Selection (1932)
• The Squatter's Daughter (1933)
• The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934)
• Strike Me Lucky (1934)
• Grandad Rudd (1935)
• Thoroughbred (1936)
• Orphan of the Wilderness (1936)
• It Isn't Done (1937)
• Tall Timbers (1937)
• Lovers and Luggers (1937)
• The Broken Melody (1938)
• Let George Do It (1938)
• Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938)
• Gone to the Dogs (1939)
• Come Up Smiling (1939)
• Mr. Chedworth Steps Out (1939)
• Dad Rudd, MP (1940)

Short Films

• Thar She Blows! (1931)
• That's Cricket (1931)
• Cinesound Review (weekly newsreel) (1931-1975)
• Cinesound Varieties (1934)
• 100,000 Cobbers (1942)
• South West Pacific (1943)

Unmade Films

Various films were announced for production by Cinesound that were not made, including adaptations of the novels Overland Telegraph and Robbery Under Arms, as well as a version of the Eureka Stockade story. In 1939 American producer Jack Lester was brought to Australia by Cinesound to produce Life of Melba, a biopic about opera singer Nellie Melba, but this was interrupted by the war.

External links

• Cinesound Productions - partial filmography – Australian Screen, an Australian Film Commission resource
• Cinesound Productions at IMDB
• Cinesound Productions at National Film and Sound Archive