Robbery Under Arms | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jack Lee |
Written by | Alexander Baron W. P. Lipscomb |
Based on | novel by Rolf Boldrewood |
Produced by | Joseph Janni |
Starring | Peter Finch Ronald Lewis |
Cinematography | Harry Waxman |
Edited by | Manuel del Campo |
Music by | Mátyás Seiber |
Production company | The Rank Organisation |
Distributed by | Rank Film Distributors of America |
Release date |
|
Running time | 83 minutes (USA) 99 minutes (UK) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Robbery Under Arms is a 1957 British crime film directed by Jack Lee and starring Peter Finch and Ronald Lewis. [1] It is based on the 1888 Australian novel Robbery Under Arms by Thomas Alexander Browne who wrote under the pseudonym Rolf Boldrewood. [2]
In 1865 Australia, the two Marston brothers, bold Dick and sensitive Jim, are drawn into a life of crime by their ex-convict father Ben and his friend, the famous cattle thief Captain Starlight. They help take some cattle their father and Starlight have stolen across the country to Adelaide, where they are sold, with Starlight impersonating an English gentleman claiming to own the rustled herd.
The two brothers take their share of the money and go to Melbourne. On board ship, they meet the Morrison sisters: greedy Kate and nice Jean, who are romanced by Dick and Jim respectively. They read that Starlight has been arrested, and return home, where they and their father narrowly escape arrest.
The brothers are then reunited with Starlight, who has left prison, and join him and some other men in robbing a coach, in which a trooper is shot and killed. Dick and Jim go to the gold fields to make enough money to escape to America. There, they are reunited with Kate, who is married but is still interested in Dick, and Jean, who Jim marries.
Just as the brothers are about to leave to start a new life, Captain Starlight and his gang (including Ben Marston) arrive to rob the local bank. During the robbery, several people are killed by Starlight's gang (although not by Starlight), including a mother protecting child. Jim Marston is captured by locals and is about to be lynched, but is rescued by a trooper who comes to arrest him. Dick rescues Jim from the trooper, but is killed in the attempt.
Jim hides out with Starlight and his father, but misses his wife too much and goes back to see her. Starlight and Ben Marston are killed in a shoot out with police. Jim Marston is arrested.
Ealing Studios had planned to make the film after The Overlanders (1946) and Eureka Stockade (1949), and they hired William Lipscomb to do the script. [4] Gregory Peck at one stage was announced as a possible star. [5]
In June 1949 Ealing announced Ralph Smart would direct the film after Bitter Springs at an estimated budget of £250,000 with John McCallum as a possible star. [6]
Ken G. Hall wanted to direct. However plans to make the film were hampered by the closing of Pagewood Studios. [7] Leslie Norman was keen to produce. [8]
Then in the mid-1950s director Jack Lee and Joe Janni had a big hit with the Australian-themed A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Peter Finch and written by Lipscomb. Rank put Lee and Janni under contract for two years and had Finch under contract. The three were reunited for the movie. [9]
Peter Finch had made The Shiralee (1957) in Australia immediately before.
Jack Lee later said:
I made a mistake choosing Robbery Under Arms, a complicated Victorian novel with masses of plots and subplots and too much moralising. However I went ahead and chose the part for Peter Finch, who complained that he was overshadowed by everyone else, and in a way he was right. Janni and I weren't happy with the script and would have liked to put it off for another year. But we were under pressure from Rank and we had to go ahead with an inadequate script. There are one or two nice scenes in it but it's too slow and talky. [9]
Vincent Ball said Finch suggested to Lee that Ball and Finch play the Marsden boys but John Davis "insisted that contract artistes be used for the leads". Ball agreed to play a smaller role if he could go to Australia. He was away "ten or eleven weeks" on salary to say one line in Australia filming the rest of his scenes at Pinewood. [10]
Shooting began in January 1957 [11] on location in Australia at the Flinders Ranges, South Australia and near Bourke, New South Wales, with two days filming at Pagewood Studios. In April the unit moved to the UK where interiors and exteriors were shot at Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire. [12] [13]
During the making of the film, on-screen couple David McCallum and Jill Ireland fell in love off screen as well, and married once they returned to England. [14]
The film was popular at the Australian box office, although reviews were poor. [13]
Variety called it:
A well-made, straightforward drama which should click okay in British houses. As is so often the case, its American impact will depend entirely on whether its stars are sufficient magnets to attract patrons outside the British domain. The picture is part of the Rank Organization’s current policy of spotlighting the Commonwealth. Its main problem is whether it does not follow a bit too soon after “The Shiralee,” which also starred Peter Finch and the wide, open Aussie spaces... The acting is less important than the situations. With fist- fights, gunfight and a near-lynching, there is plenty of* meat for good, solid thrills. [15]
Filmink magazine said "there's no real theme or story uniting it all... There's no interesting mystery or enigma to Starlight... All the cool things he does in the book... are cut out except for the bit where he impersonates a gent from England. There's no real relationship between Starlight and the boys... A real dull mess." [16]
Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch was an English-Australian actor of theatre, film and radio.
The Shiralee is a 1957 British film directed by Leslie Norman and starring Peter Finch. It is in the Australian Western genre, based on the 1955 novel by D'Arcy Niland. It was made by Ealing Studios, and although all exterior scenes were filmed in Sydney, Scone and Binnaway, New South Wales and Australian actors Charles Tingwell, Bill Kerr and Ed Devereaux played in supporting roles, the film is really a British film made in Australia, rather than an Australian film.
Cinesound Productions Pty Ltd was an Australian feature film production company. Established in June 1931, Cinesound developed out of a group of companies centred on 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.
Leslie Armande Norman was an English post-war film director, producer and editor who also worked extensively on 1960s television series later in his career.
Eureka Stockade is a 1949 British film of the story surrounding Irish-Australian rebel and politician Peter Lalor and the gold miners' rebellion of 1854 at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria, in the Australian Western genre.
Robbery Under Arms is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888. It was abridged into a single volume in 1889 as part of Macmillan's one-volume Colonial Library series and has not been out of print since.
Bitter Springs is a 1950 Australian–British film directed by Ralph Smart. An Australian pioneer family leases a piece of land from the government in the Australian outback in 1900 and hires two inexperienced British men as drovers. Problems with local Aboriginal people arise over the possession of a waterhole. Much of the film was shot on location in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia
Windom's Way is a 1957 British thriller film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Peter Finch and Mary Ure. Made in Eastman Color, it is set during the Malayan Emergency.
Robbery Under Arms is a 1920 Australian film directed by Kenneth Brampton and financed by mining magnate Pearson Tewksbury. It is an early example of the "Meat pie Western".
Robbery Under Arms is a 1985 Australian action adventure film starring Sam Neill as bushranger Captain Starlight.
A Town Like Alice is a 1956 British drama film produced by Joseph Janni and starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch that is based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Nevil Shute. The film does not follow the whole novel, concluding at the end of part two and truncating or omitting much detail. It was partially filmed in Malaya and Australia.
A Son Is Born is a 1946 Australian melodrama directed by Eric Porter and starring Ron Randell, Peter Finch, John McCallum and Muriel Steinbeck. It was one of the few films made in Australia in the 1940s. The movie is particularly notable for featuring Randell, Finch and McCallum before they moved overseas and became stars in the United States and Britain respectively.
Alfred Rolfe, real name Alfred Roker, was an Australian stage and film director and actor, best known for being the son-in-law of the celebrated actor-manager Alfred Dampier, with whom he appeared frequently on stage, and for his prolific output as a director during Australia's silent era, including Captain Midnight, the Bush King (1911), Captain Starlight, or Gentleman of the Road (1911) and The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915). Only one of his films as director survives today.
Robbery Under Arms is a 1907 Australian silent western/drama film based on the 1888 novel by Rolf Boldrewood about two brothers and their relationship with the bushranger Captain Starlight. It was the first film version of the novel and the third Australian feature ever made.
Captain Starlight, or Gentleman of the Road is a 1911 Australian silent film about the bushranger Captain Starlight. It was based on Alfred Dampier's stage adaptation of the 1888 novel Robbery Under Arms. It is considered a lost film.
The Magic Shoes is a 1935 Australian short film based on the fairy tale Cinderella. It features the first screen performance by Peter Finch and Helen Hughes, daughter of former Prime Minister William Hughes and was the first dramatised movie to be shot at the National Studios, built to make The Flying Doctor (1936).
Pagewood Studios was a film studio in Sydney, Australia, that was used to make Australian, British and Hollywood films for 20 years.
Robbery Under Arms is a 1950 BBC radio adaptation of Rolf Boldrewood's popular 1888 novel Robbery Under Arms.
Robbery Under Arms is a 1907 Australian film based on the popular 1888 novel. It was from the team of John and Nevin Tait and Millard Johnson and William Gibson, who had just made The Story of the Kelly Gang. It is considered a lost film.
Robbery Under Arms is a 1890 play by Alfred Dampier and Garnet Walch based on the novel of the same name by Rolf Boldrewood.