Introduction

December 2002: After the Film and History Conference in Adelaide, I am flying home, having given my paper on Australians in early (1915-1925) Hollywood. I flip through the airline magazine and am amused to find an article about Australians in today’s Hollywood. “Aussies are making it big in Hollywood, winning awards and demanding huge fees,” declares the lead-in. “But are they just the flavour of the month or a much needed shot of fresh talent?” The article mentions a dozen “Australian actors who now wield serious clout in the moviemaking mecca,” continuing: “Hollywood’s tv biz is also awash with the spawn of the antipodean talent pool.” [1]

The article neatly encapsulates the issues and attitudes that I have found in contemporary coverage of the earlier Australian presence in Hollywood. There’s national pride (“making it big in Hollywood”), but also a tortured concern for what this success might say about Australia’s place in the world (“are they just the flavour of the month?”). The tensions between local and global are as clear in the Qantas article as they were in commentaries from the teens and twenties of the twentieth century.

An Australian journal, Picture Show, reported the presence of Australians in a similar way in 1922, when a special preview screening of Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke was held in Los Angeles. The journal reported that the audience was “entirely composed of Australia-born actors and actresses now playing in American photoplays.” [2] The article then listed 22 of those performers.

But the Australians in Hollywood – then, as now – are not limited to performers. Nor are all the performers classified as “stars.” My own research into this intriguing aspect of film history began with Australian silent actress Louise Lovely, the subject of my PhD. Lovely, who worked in Hollywood between 1915 and 1924, was once referred to as “Australia’s foremost international screen star.” [3] As I discovered, she was surrounded by other Australians during the time she was in Hollywood. The 93 Australians I have identified worked at all levels of the film industry, and on both sides of the camera. There was a studio owner, cinematographers, stunt people, even a body double. There were performers who seemed happy to have consistent work as extras; there were others who wanted fame. There were triumphs and tragedies. Above all, there are great characters whose stories are so engaging that they beg to be told. Furthermore, my research strongly suggests that, among all the Australians in Hollywood at this time, Louise Lovely was not the most prominent.

These are indications that there is much still to discover about the “gum-leaf” phenomenon. This paper reports on my preliminary investigations into the personalities and their social and industrial contexts – who they were, why they were there, how they lived and worked, what it meant – if anything – to be an Australian in Hollywood, and how they were understood in Australia.

While this paper can only point to the directions that further research might take, I’d like to briefly note that, at the same time that Australians were working in Hollywood, there were significant numbers of Americans working in the Australian film industry. This cultural exchange raises questions of the ways in which the US and Australian film industries were intertwined through the personnel who worked in both.

Who were they?

To understand the kinds of people who went to early Hollywood – and why they went – it’s important to remember that Hollywood was a small, raw town at the beginning of the period under investigation. Eileen Bowser reports that the Selig company became active in Southern California as early as 1908 and that, by 1911, a number of studios had been established. [4]  Even in 1915, when Louise Lovely arrived in Hollywood, it was still undeveloped. Although it was growing in importance, it was only just beginning to rival other filmmaking centres like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. One writer describes it as a “classic boom town,” with a population that swelled from 5,000 in 1911, to 35,000 by 1919. By 1925, 130,000 people lived there, “initially outstripping the available real estate.” [5]

In the early days, Hollywood still had a wild-west atmosphere, complete with working cowboys and “indians.” In 1915 the Universal studio was built on a ranch, though before construction could begin in 1914, the spring crops of oats had to be harvested: “By October five hundred people were living on the property, seventy-five of them in teepees situated along the hills. . . .” [4] Even in 1917, “there were still hundreds of orange and lemon groves surrounding the sprawling city. . . .” [7]

Hollywood wasn’t a place that Australians could go on a moment’s whim. They first had to take a six-week sea cruise from Sydney to San Francisco, and then make their way to Los Angeles. At the beginning, it wasn’t the glitz of the industry that drew them there. The system by which film actors became stars was only beginning to function, and Hollywood’s glamour aesthetic wasn’t yet fully developed.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that the first Australians in Hollywood were adventurous types. For example, possibly the first Australian to join the film industry there was J.P. McGowan, an excitement seeker who was born in the tiny South Australian town of Terowie in 1880. He enlisted for the Boer War, “went on expeditions in Central Africa, fought in Central America, was a horse wrangler at the St Louis Exposition.” [8] He was acting with the Kalem Motion Picture Company when it relocated to Los Angeles in 1909. The first studio there didn’t open until 1911; in fact, McGowan arrived only two years after the Selig company had established a production base in Los Angeles. [9]  McGowan later originated an entire genre of serials that focused on railways. He and his wife, actress Helen Holmes, established the Signal Film Corporation. Holmes, who did her own stunts, was the daring heroine who leapt onto speeding locomotives, or saved speeding locomotives from falling off wrecked bridges.

Many of the earliest Australians in Hollywood had been stage performers, for whom travelling extensively was simply part of the job. For example, Billy Bevan, a comedian with Mack Sennett in 1922, had as a young man joined the Pollard Australian Opera Company and “toured India, China, Japan, Canada, Alaska, and the United States in a series of musical comedies.” On leaving the company, he played in Vancouver, and then joined San Francisco’s Anderson Gaity Company. [10]

Harry “Snub” Pollard had also been a member of the Pollard Opera Company, and had begun touring at six years old. In Hollywood, he became a comic actor and director who had his own production company after working in the Charlie Chaplin company and with Harold Lloyd. [11] Another stage veteran who put his experience to use as a screen comic was Clyde Cook, who had appeared in Australian vaudeville, and was later featured in Fox comedies including 1920’s Kiss me quick. (USA, 1920) [12]

Yet another example of a travelling performer is Enid Bennett, who had been a stage actress in Australia. As a member of the very well-known Fred Niblo company from the US, she had toured Australia and New Zealand during 1913 and 1914. [13] In 1916, Bennett went to Hollywood. There she found fame, and in 1918 married Niblo, who had – in the interim – consolidated the directing career he had begun in Australia. [14] Bennett appeared in approximately 47 films, including Robin Hood (USA, 1922) with Douglas Fairbanks. Enid’s sisters Marjorie and Katherine also had Hollywood careers. [15]  Although, at the time, she had a higher profile than Louise Lovely, Enid never moved back to Australia, which is possibly why, today, she is not as well remembered as Lovely.

Why did they go?

Other reasons brought Australians to early Hollywood besides a taste for adventure, and travelling as part of work. Conditions in the early Australian film industry may have pushed many to seek work overseas.
Some, like Louise Lovely, had previous experience in the Australian film industry, in addition to theatrical experience. Lovely had made films with Australian Life Biograph in 1911 and 1912. When the company had folded – as did others at that time – one of the investors blamed the amalgamation of film companies that would, by 1913, result in the “Combine.” [16] She then toured in vaudeville with her husband, but by 1914 the vaudeville circuit was suffering “the evil effects of the great European war” and “an all-round depression.” [17] Others who travelled to the US at the time were Arthur Shirley (1915) [18] , Sylvia Bremer (1917) [19] , and Jack and Lilly Molloy (1917). [20]

During the 1920s, however, it was the lure of the movies themselves that increasingly drew Australians. Jack O’Brien, for instance, had been involved in three Australian films, including assisting with stunts for Snowy Baker’s The Man from Kangaroo (1920) and The Shadow of Lightning Ridge (1920). The following year, he had gone “across to USA in search of bigger things,” [21] and there found work both as a comedian and a stuntman. [22]

Charles Chauvel, later to become a respected director in Australia, went to Hollywood in 1922, after working with Snowy Baker at his “Palmerston” studio and on Barrett Films’ A Rough Passage (Australia, 1922). Picture Show reported his growing fascination with motion pictures:

The deeper he gets into the work, the more he is enthralled; and it was while this latest picture was being made that he finally decided to visit Los Angeles, the Mecca of the moving picture world, and the place where he could gain widest experience. [23]

During the 1920s, the growing appeal of the movies drew the merely starstruck to Hollywood. Not only had the screen aesthetic of glamour increased its allure, but the style of screen acting had changed to a more subtle, “psychological” one. [24]  Stage experience was now often a handicap rather than an advantage. The rhetoric of “being discovered” was being played out. Louise Lovely was able to capitalize on this with her “Day at the Studio” act with which she toured vaudeville in North America and Australia from 1921 to 1925. Trade paper Everyones claimed that twenty-three thousand movie aspirants in Australia alone [25]  were “directed” on stage by Lovely and her husband, in “screen tests” that – it was promised – would reveal any hidden aptitude for a screen career. [26]

The trip to Hollywood was now made by hopefuls with no performance experience at all, or the kind of slim foundation afforded by acting classes: “Miss Keppie, formerly in the motion-picture classes conducted at the Snowy Baker Institute [Sydney], has reached Los Angeles, and is doing small parts with Fox.” [27]

Another route was the beauty contest. Ena Gregory had been “a child beauty in the Paddington (Sydney) district.” [28] Her attractive appearance apparently was enough to earn her a recommendation:

Miss Ena Gregory, a pretty girl of eighteen, walked into the Sydney office of the Australian branch of Universal two years ago, and told the director she would like to play in pictures. This is not an unusual opinion of many young ladies, but in this instance the director thought the young lady showed talent, and advised her to go to Universal City California. Miss Gregory caught the next boat. . . . [29]

Frequently, the hopefuls travelled to Hollywood without financial resources to live on until they were “discovered.” In fact, Australian magazines of the 1920s repeatedly warned Australians not to go to Hollywood looking for work unless they had savings to live on until they found employment. [30]

How did they live and work?

It is often difficult to find details about the conditions of production during the silent era, but information gathered so far sketches the difficulties of “making it” in early Hollywood.

Many had to cobble together jobs in order to survive, but the manner in which they did this shows initiative and adaptability. Jim Warwick, for example, was a Queenslander who had appeared in Snowy Baker’s The Jackaroo of Coolanbong(1920). His experience with horses led, first, to a job as “riding master to the daughters of a well-known Los Angeles millionaire” [31] , and then to his being hired by Douglas Fairbanks to train stunt horses. He also performed stunts in Robin Hood. [32]  Following this, his four years of combat as a lieutenant in the Australian Infantry Forces (AIF) were apparently drawn upon when he was hired as a technical advisor for The Vanishing American (USA, 1925), to help Paramount “achieve realism of the highest order, as well as authenticity in the matter of an armed dispute between pioneers and aboriginals. . . .” [33]

Charles Chauvel survived by, among other jobs, grading avocados [34]  and performing a vaudeville act in which Snowy Baker flicked a cigarette out of his mouth with a stockwhip. [35] The highlight for Chauvel, though, was time spent with Fred Niblo:

Fred Niblo took me on to his production staff as an understudy. The picture was just two months in the making, and I regard those two months as invaluable to me. Mr Niblo made it possible for me to gain all that I could get while with him, most of my time being spent on the “set” and in the cutting and projection room. [36]

Those with stage experience at least had something to fall back on when screen jobs were short. Comedian Clyde Cook, for instance, appeared on the Los Angeles Orpheum vaudeville stage in 1924. [37]

The determination to work could result in some taking unsuitable work. John Gavin, who had appeared in many films in Australia, ruefully recounted his early days in Hollywood:

When I went to Los Angeles I had great ideas. I told them that I was a dramatic actor. . . . They evidently thought otherwise, for all that was offering was comedy roles. . . . At last I got a job with Charlie Chaplin, but when I was made up and ready on the set I got cold feet, and confessed to the little comedian that I did not feel in the least bit happy. He could see that I was genuinely distressed, and generously offered to release me before there was any harm done. [38]

Gavin claimed that, following this, he established his “own company and made 26 Westerns with more or less success.” [39]

The issue of how “success” is measured is an interesting one. How would one classify the experience of Gwen Nelson? A dancer, she went under the name of Désirée Duchêne and claimed in one interview that she was a body double for Theda Bara, performing the Dance of the seven veils in Salome (USA, 1919). [40]

Winter Hall (actually a New Zealander) seems to have been happy to work in small film roles. He had previously had a long stage career: “Mr Hall, by virtue of a successful career of fifteen years on the dramatic stage, was well equipped for picture acting.” [41]  When he returned to Australia in 1925, he explained he had worked as a “free lance,” not contracted to any particular studio. “You see,” he was quoted:

If you do not happen to be one of the big stars, and you enter into a contract to work for a certain corporation, you must be prepared to play any sort of part in any sort of picture, and you are subject to a call at any time. . . . I am a type and am carefully docketed away in the memories of producers as one who, in appearance, may figure as a good father, a banker, senator, professor, minister of the Gospel, scientist, and so on. I keep away from beard and heavy makeup. . . . I get plenty to do, and yet am in the happy position of playing only such parts as those I approve. I do not play dirty, bad men. . . . I suppose I have worked with every star in the business and under the best-known producers. [42]

Lotus Thompson, however, was claimed to be unhappy with the roles given to her, using this as the basis for an extremely successful publicity stunt in which she threw “acid” on her legs. From her hospital bed she explained that she was a serious actress:

“But it’s the same thing over and over again:

“‘Here, girlie, put on this bathing suit.’

“I got sick of it all, so Saturday night I went to a drug store and bought the acid. I told the clerk it was to be used to remove warts, but it wasn’t. I wanted to disfigure my legs so that nobody would ever want to look at them again.

“I hope they’re scarred beyond recovery.” [43]

However, the doctor who treated Thompson at the hospital was quoted: “I shouldn’t like to spoil a good thing. . . . But whatever she may have used on her legs, it wasn’t acid. . . . In my opinion, the legs should be “camera proof” by Thursday at the latest.” [44] Two months later, Jack Gavin wrote to Everyones: “When last mentioned in the film sheets here, it was apparent that Miss Thompson’s acid stunt had not been valueless, for she is now getting quite an amount of work.” [45]

Real tragedy also struck Australians in Hollywood. Actor Ronald Byram died in the 1918 influenza epidemic [46] , and the “child beauty” Ena Gregory was badly burnt in an accident during filming in 1925. [47]

What did it mean to be an Australian?

In today’s Hollywood, says actor Jack Thompson, “Australians are a kind of royalty and we’re enjoying that fame.” [48] But what did it mean to be an Australian in early Hollywood? Did being an Australian help or hinder a fledgling career? Any foreign actors were, apparently very welcome in 1923, with one writer claiming Hollywood had doors “thrown wide open” for them and that they were “bowed obsequiously in.” [49] Two years later, Jack Gavin reported that “a great number of screen actors, stars and others, evince very great interest whenever Australia is mentioned.” [50]  However, it is not known exactly how Australians were viewed, either by studios or audiences.

Certainly, Australian accents were not a problem in the silent era, but was there a snobby reaction to “colonials”? This attitude is suggested by the fact that, when Lovely and her Cooma-born husband went on tour with their studio act, he was not billed as Australian but as “the eminent English comedian.” [5]

Yet Australians writing home from Los Angeles claimed to be aggressively advertising their home country, which – if we can believe what they wrote – they probably wouldn’t do if being Australian were an obstacle. Arthur Shirley wrote: “I have a banner with ‘Australia’ written on it that I put right across the front of my car, and every chance I get I boost Australia.” [52]  Snowy Baker was similarly nationalistic: “I always keep the good old flag flying. Have named my home ‘Cooee,’ so there is no lack of Australian atmosphere, especially on Sundays, when several Aussies make ‘Cooee’ a stepping off place for a talk-feast.” [53]

Gavin, however, wasn’t impressed by Baker’s performance of Australian-ness. “Snowy Baker is here,” he griped. “He has been publishing a lot of bunk about the slang of Australia, and in that way getting some cheap, questionable publicity.” [54]

There does not seem to have been an Australian “colony,” an enclave in which Australians lived together, or gathered together regularly, as did the English and Hungarians. [55] Baker wrote that the Australians in the film industry were “not as clannish as one would expect. Perhaps it is partly due to the fact that Los Angeles is spread over a large area, and, being at different studios some miles apart, we don’t come together.” [56]

However, Australians do seem to have come out in force to support other Australians. One instance is the 1922 screening of The Sentimental Bloke, mentioned earlier. Another example was the Orpheum performance by Australian circus family, the Wirths. Australians not only attended the show, but celebrated together afterwards: “One of our happy parties was at the famous Sunset Inn . . . . ‘Hail Australia, land of beauty, sovereign of the Southern seas’ was our evening anthem.” [57]

There are also cases of Australians helping each other: Louise Lovely’s first Hollywood job came about through an Australian contact, Arthur Shirley, whom Lovely and her husband had known from the Australian stage. Shirley was working at Universal in 1915, and was instrumental in introducing Lovely to the studio manager. It is likely that Chauvel’s understudy position with Fred Niblo came about through the Australian connection with Enid Bennett, Niblo’s Australian-born wife.

How was it reported in Australia?

The list of sources for this paper makes it clear that Australian trade papers and fan magazines followed with keen interest the doings of Australians in Hollywood. Just as the 2002 Qantas article proudly points to awards won by Aussies and the “huge fees” they are demanding, earlier reporting similarly scored nationalistic points by emphasising Australians’ success in Hollywood. A typical comment: “It seems no matter where Australians may roam, they forge their way into prominence.” [58]

Another comment treats national pride with humorous irony:

These Australians will really have to be suppressed! It’s become a habit with them to succeed in American pictures. If things go on much longer in the same way, the Yank won’t have a chance to get into his own country’s productions. [59]

So far, I haven’t found that these journals offer any analysis of why Australians might be successful in the US, both in front of and behind the camera. The 2002 Qantas article suggests that, perhaps, “The compact nature of the [Australian] industry forces actors to maximize work possibilities by moving between television, film, stage and voice work, becoming much more capable actors in the process.” [60]

But the early Australians, as far as I can tell, were reported in Australia as being successful simply because they were Australians – the familiar mythology of the young country producing superior performers and crew just as it produced people who were superior on the sporting field and at war.

Americans in Australia

Although the focus of this paper is the Australians who were in Hollywood between 1915 and 1925, the point must be made briefly that many Americans came to work in the Australian industry during the same period. It has been said that those who came were down on their luck or at the end of their careers. [61]  But in fact some, like Fred Niblo, were in Australia at the beginning of impressive careers. These cross-cultural flows point to the global nature of the film industry, as well as the ambivalence of Australia’s relationship to Hollywood.

It was widely recognised that Australia’s small population could hardly support a vibrant film industry and that audiences should be sought overseas. But would that mean losing the “gum-leaf” flavour? Various approaches were taken to walking this tightrope. In 1919, Snowy Baker announced he wanted to make films with an international appeal but an Australian inflection. [62]  He imported screenwriter Bess Meredyth – later to write Ben Hur (USA 1925) – and her husband, actor/director Wilfred Lucas, who had been with D.W. Griffith. Baker’s cinematographer Bert Glennon later became head cameraman at Lasky and a director at FBO. [63] Brownie Vernon, Baker’s female star, was also imported, as was editor Dudley Blanchard.

When Arthur Shirley returned to Australia in 1920, he brought back Americans for his venture into making films that could be sold in the US:

Mr Shirley is accompanied here by L.E. Widder and W Harris, two Americans who have been long identified with the industry. Others to follow are W Thompson (camera-man), H Jackson (scenario-writer), and Marie Pavis (leading-woman). [64]

Later he was joined by studio manager William H Jansen, also from the US. [65]

When the controversial For the Term of his Natural Life was produced by Australasian Films in 1926, director Norman Dawn was imported from Hollywood, as was star Eva Novak and cinematographer Len Roos. The tensions in the Australia-Hollywood relationship were evident in the production team’s stated intention to teach Australians how to make films. [66]

While Louise Lovely didn’t import personnel for Jewelled Nights – the film she made in Australia in 1925 – she did bring back equipment such as lights, as well as approaches to promotion. This publicity often reveals the tensions between the US and Australian industries. While the film positioned itself as proudly Australian, the delicate complexities of the promotional material mean that simultaneously with claiming the film is equal to anything produced in the US, Jewelled Nights is also given an underdog position. It was, for example, made “without the usual studio facilities with which American producers are blessed.” [67]  Lovely later said that she felt others in the Australian industry resented her US know-how. [68]

Conclusion: the “gum-leaf mafia”

Why “gum-leaf mafia”? According to Alan Veitch, the term was “revived around 1982 by the Hollywood press corps as a jocular reference to the then small band of Australians starting to make their presence felt.” [69]  The “gum-leaf” connection can be traced back at least to Louise Lovely in 1922, when she nostalgically described two weeks during which Australians were particularly prominent. [70] Despite its ironic use, “mafia” perhaps connotes something more sinister, along the lines of Australians forming an underworld “family” in Hollywood, with the intention of taking over the film industry. This is perhaps wishful thinking on the part of the Australians, as meanwhile, ironically, back home in Australia, the Hollywood industry is reshaping Australian production through the economic politics of the Fox and Warner Bros. studios.

I’ve used the phrase “gum-leaf mafia” to underscore both the deep ambivalence of, and the continuity between, the concerns evident both today and between 1915 and 1925. Eighty years ago, as now, Australians struggled to balance the local and global. National pride co-existed with world-wide realities of the film industry. And looking wider than the film industry, these concerns encompass Australia’s uneasy relationship with US culture and the global economy in general.

I believe that this research into the Australians who worked in early Hollywood – as well as the Americans who worked in the Australian industry – can help tease out some of the forces and influences which structure these relationships.

Until fairly recently, the silent era been under-researched. As I found when researching Louise Lovely, there is also much misinformation embedded into the record. Jane Gaines reminds us that “press books, press releases, interviews with publicists, and the industry press” – all the documents film historians regularly use – are “records of the industry’s own self-aggrandizement.” [71]

The process of gathering biographical details on these individuals, and setting them in their cultural and industrial contexts, helps to unveil the workings of early Hollywood, as well as Australia’s responses. Sometimes surprising patterns emerge. For example, of the 93 Australians I have identified, at least 36 worked at Universal at some point. This is a large percentage, especially in an era before the many smaller companies had fully consolidated into the big studios. Is this significant? Why did so many work there? It is partly, I believe, because Universal was a low-budget, low-prestige studio, with a high staff turnover, that therefore always had openings; it was, in other words, a good place to get a start. Without this kind of research, these hypotheses cannot emerge.

Research should also help redress the way so much attention is paid to performers, by filling in details of long-neglected cameramen, publicity people, and others involved in the less glamorous – but vital – areas of filmmaking.

The performers’ biographies, too, are useful because they describe careers of people who weren’t leading stars. With the possible exception of Snub Pollard and Billy Bevan, very few of the Australians were in the front ranks but this doesn’t make them insignificant. After all, stars are so rare that their lives cannot represent the ways in which Hollywood is experienced by the majority of hopefuls. Winter Hall, for example, who made a career playing doctors and senators, had experiences that were much more typical – because more often repeated – than those of major stars. When we focus on the stars, we run the risk of buying into the film industry’s own set of values, and being blinded by oversimplified narrative trajectories to success. However, doing research into obscure Hollywood workers provides an opportunity to put together stories that, to some extent, lie outside the publicists’ reach.

Finally, with this new information, we can re-assess Australians in Hollywood and the Americans in Australia. With fresh eyes, we can bring a new focus to the vexed question of how the Australian film industry relates to the global film industry. Issues of localism and globalism, nationalism, scales of economy, access to markets, and the necessity for government support were then, and are still now, hot topics in any discussion of the Australian film industry. These are issues that have never been resolved, in Australia or elsewhere. My conclusion, therefore, is that research into the Australians in early Hollywood is important because, in recovering their lost stories, we create a more complete picture of Australia’s place in relation to the rest of the world. One useful goal is to restore to our knowledge of the early film industries, what Barbara Klinger has called “their messy complexity.” [72]

Endnotes

[1] Michaela Boland, “The Down-Under Plunder,” Qantas, December (2002): 131
[2] “How America advertises it,” Picture Show, January 1 (1922): 40
[3] Andree Wright, Brilliant Careers: Women in Australian Cinema, (Woollahra, Pan Books, 1986): 29
[4] Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 (New York: Scribners, 1990) 151, 161.
[5] John Baxter, The Hollywood Exiles, (New York, Taplinger Publishing, 1976), 118-119
[6] Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture 1915-1928, (New York, Scribners, 1990), 5
[7] Frank Westmore and Muriel Davidson, The Westmores of Hollywood, (Philadelphia, JB Lippincourt Co., 1976), 42
[8]Flyer, “Cinema pioneer John P McGowan,” South Australian federation of film societies, 2002
[9] Robert Sklar, Movie-made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, (New York, Vintage Books/Random House, 1975), 67
[10] “So Australia scores once more,” Picture Show, April 1 (1922): 41
[11] Ambrose Adagio, “And, talking of Australia,” Picture Show, February 1 (1923): 16
[12] Advertisement, Kiss Me Quick, in Picture Show, December 1 (1920): 48
[13] See, for example, programme, Excuse me!, Criterion Theatre, commencing June 7 1913, in collection of programmes, State Library of New South Wales, Criterion Theatre A-E
[14] Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, Australian Film, 1900-1977 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998) 58, 60.
[15] “A talented family,” Everyones, September 2 (1925): 6
[16] Rhodes Speight, in Theatre, January 1 (1915): 22
[17] Australian Variety, December 9 (1914): 3
[18] Theatre, March 1 (1915): 46
[19] Motography, March 24 (1917): 607
[20] Theatre, February 1 (1917): 45
[21] “With Snowy Baker in Los Angeles,” Picture Show, June 1 (1921): 20-21
[22] Snowy Baker, “With Australians in America,” Picture Show, March 1 (1922): 22
[23] “Another Australian seeks American studios,” Picture Show, April 1 (1922): 37
[24] Roberta Pearson, Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992)
[25] “Louise Lovely tour nearing end,” Everyones, January 7 (1925): 20
[26] See chapter 7, ” ‘Have you a screen personality?’: personal appearance tours, 1921-1925,” in Jeannette Delamoir, “Louise Lovely: the construction of a star,” (PhD diss., La Trobe University, 2003)
[27] “With Snowy Baker in Los Angeles,” Picture Show, June 1 (1921): 21
[28] Everyones, April 21 (1926): 33
[29] “Australian girl in Canadian picture,” Everyones, December 6 (1926): 12
[30] Just one example: “Trying his luck in America,” Picture Show, October 1 (1920): 39
[31]  Picture Show, June 1 (1921): 21
[32] “Snowy Baker’s Los Angeles letter,” Picture Show, May 1 (1922): 45
[33] Everyones, September 9 (1925): 21
[34] Susanne Chauvel Carson, Charles and Elsa Chauvel: Movie Pioneers, (St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1989), 10
[35] “Snowy Baker’s Los Angeles Letter,” Picture Show, September 1 (1922): 65
[36] “An Australian in screenland,” Picture Show, September 1 (1923): 50-51
[37] “With Gavin in America,” Everyones, October 1 (1924): 18
[38] “The man who made good,” Everyones, December 9 (1925): 3
[39] “The man who made good,” Everyones, December 9 (1925): 3
[40] Picture Show, June 7 (1919): 13
[41] “Personal impressions of notable film people,” Theatre, October 1 (1921): 44
[42] “Winter Hall, movie actor, returns to Australasia,” Everyones, December 2 (1925): 37
[43] Everyones, April 1 (1925): 20
[44] Everyones, April 1 (1925): 20
[45] Jack Gavin, “Around Hollywood studios,” Everyones, July 29 (1925): 5
[46] Picture Show, May 17 (1919): 28
[47] Everyones, October 7 (1925): 32
[48] Boland, 133
[49] “Tail Pieces,” Photoplayer, October 6 (1923): 35
[50] Jack Gavin, “Around Hollywood studios,” Everyones, August 5 (1925): 38
[51] See for example, undated clipping c. 1923, Palace Theatre, Fort Wayne, in Louise Lovely scrapbook, ScreenSound Australia, Canberra
[52] “A hit in pictures,” Theatre, February 1 (1916): 19
[53] “Snowy Baker’s Los Angeles Letter,” Picture Show, September 1 (1922): 65
[54] Theatre, January 1 (1919): 12
[55] Baxter, 129, 123
[56] Snowy Baker, “A smell of gum leaves,” Picture Show, April 1 (1922): 47
[57] Baker, “A smell of gum leaves”, 47
[58] “Australians succeeding abroad,” Picture Show, September 1 (1922): 71
[59] “So Australia scores once more,” Picture Show, April 1 (1922): 41
[60] Boland, 135
[61] See, for example, John Tulloch, writing about Wilfred Lucas in Legends on the Screen: The Narrative Film in Australia 1919-1929, (Sydney, Currency/Australian Film Institute, 1981), 82
[62] Tulloch, 81
[63] Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, (New York, Harper/Perennial, 1990), 487
[64] “Matters of moment in movieland,” Theatre, May 1 (1920): 36
[65] “The Shirley enterprise,” Theatre, June 1 (1920): 34
[66] Tulloch, 320
[67] Press Book for Jewelled Nights, 1925, in Jewelled Nights file, ScreenSound Australia: 2
[68] Interview of Louise Lovely by Ina Bertrand, Hobart, November 23 1978, undertaken as part of National Library of Australia Film History Project. Audio tapes in ScreenSound Australia, Canberra. Transcript: 76
[69] Alan Veitch, “Our silent invasion,” Age, December 2 2002: 3
[70] Baker “A smell of gum leaves”, 47
[71] Jane Gaines, “From elephants to Lux soap: the programming and ‘flow’ of early motion picture exploitation,” Velvet Light Trap, no. 25 (1990): 30
[72] Barbara Klinger, “Film history terminable and interminable: recovering the past in reception studies,” Screen, vol. 38, no. 2 (1997): 110
Created on: Friday, 30 April 2004 | Last Updated: 30-Apr-04