Roger Vadim Plemiannikov was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.
Eamon Joseph O'Brien was an American actor of stage, screen, and television, and film director. His career spanned almost 40 years, and he won one Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
They're a Weird Mob is a 1966 Australian comedy film based on the 1957 novel of the same name by John O'Grady under the pen name "Nino Culotta", the name of the main character of the book. It was the penultimate collaboration of the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
John William Pilbean Goffage MBE, known professionally as Chips Rafferty, was an Australian actor. Called "the living symbol of the typical Australian", Rafferty's career stretched from the late 1930s until he died in 1971, and during this time he performed regularly in major Australian feature films as well as appearing in British and American productions, including The Overlanders and The Sundowners. He appeared in commercials in Britain during the late 1950s, encouraging British emigration to Australia.
The Sleeping Car Murders is a 1965 French mystery film directed by Costa-Gavras from the novel by Sébastien Japrisot. It stars Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Catherine Allégret, Jacques Perrin, Charles Denner and Pascale Roberts. The film was the directorial debut of Costa-Gavras, to be followed later by other, more politically-oriented work.
The Phantom Stockman is a 1953 Australian western film written and directed by Lee Robinson and starring Chips Rafferty, Victoria Shaw, Max Osbiston and Guy Doleman.
Walk Into Paradise is a 1956 French-Australian international co-production adventure film directed by Lee Robinson and Marcello Pagliero and starring Chips Rafferty and Françoise Christophe. It was shot on location in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Lee Robinson was an Australian producer, director and screenwriter who was Australia's most prolific filmmaker of the 1950s.
Andréa Parisy, was a French film actress.
King of the Coral Sea is a 1954 film starring Chips Rafferty and Charles Tingwell, directed by Lee Robinson and shot on location in Thursday Island. It was one of the most commercially successful Australian films of the 1950s and was Rod Taylor's film debut.
Dust in the Sun is a 1958 Australian mystery film adapted from the 1955 novel Justin Bayard by Jon Cleary and produced by the team of Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty. The film stars British actress Jill Adams and an Indigenous Australian actor Robert Tudawali as Emu Foot.
The Stowaway is a 1958 French-Australian film directed by Australian director Lee Robinson and French Lebanese director Ralph Habib. It was shot on location in Tahiti and is one of the few Australian financed movies of the 1950s, although the storyline has nothing to do with Australia.
Australian Western, also known as meat pie Western or kangaroo Western, is a genre of Western-style films or TV series set in the Australian outback or "the bush". Films about bushrangers are included in this genre. Some films categorised as meat-pie or Australian Westerns also fulfil the criteria for other genres, such as drama, revisionist Western, crime or thriller. A sub-genre of the Australian Western, the Northern, has been coined by the makers of High Ground (2020), to describe a film set in the Northern Territory that accurately depicts historical events in a fictionalised form, that has aspects of a thriller.
Joy Cavill was an Australian screenwriter and producer.
Southern International Productions was an Australian film production company established in the 1950s by Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty. For a few years it was the most prolific film production company in Australia, pioneering international co-productions with France, but a series of box office failures starting with Dust in the Sun caused it to be liquidated. Rafferty left producing but Lee Robinson later formed another company, Fauna, with actor John McCallum.
Reginald Thomas Lye, was an Australian actor who worked extensively in Australia and England. He was one of the busiest Australian actors of the 1950s, appearing in the majority of locally shot features at the time, as well as on stage and radio. Lee Robinson called him "one of the best character actors in Australia." He moved to England in the early 1960s,, but returned to Australia when the film industry revived in the 1970s.
Henry Murdoch, born as George Henry Murdock, was an Australian aboriginal actor and stockman who appeared in Australian films of the 1940s and 1950s. He was working as stockman in Rockhampton when discovered by Ralph Smart, who was helping make The Overlanders (1946). The film's director, Harry Watt, later claimed Murdoch and fellow aboriginal actor Clyde Combo "proved to be first-class actors and were exceedingly quick witted and intelligent. They certainly disproved the conventional idea that the Australian aboriginal is an animalistic caveman." Filmink said "It was Henry Murdoch who personified a specific type of role in the 1940s and 1950s, the aboriginal stockman who was a sidekick/tracker to the white hero."
Adventure Unlimited is a 1965 Australian anthology TV series. It was produced by Lee Robinson and associate produced by Joy Cavill. The directors included Ken Hannam. It was made by Waratah Film Productions a short lived company that came out of an unsuccessful attempt to gain a third commercial television licence.
"The Winds of Green Monday" is a 1965 Australian television play by Michael Noonan. It aired as part of Wednesday Theatre on August 4, 1965 in Sydney and Melbourne, and on 1 September 1965 in Brisbane. It starred Terry Norris and was directed by Oscar Whitbread.
