
Mrs Rudd (Alfreda Bevan) tries to welcome Mrs White (Dorothy Dunkley) to her humble home, but Dad Rudd (Bert Bailey) scares her away when he appears in his nightshirt. He is driven mad by toothache, so Dave (Fred McDonald), Uncle (Billy Driscoll) and neighbouring farmer Mr Maloney (John McGowan) try to pull the tooth with a string. Summary by Paul Byrnes.
A good example of the film’s well-developed sense of farce. The scene is well timed and well cut, especially as the action heats up around Dad’s tooth extraction. It also makes good use of sound – in the muffled roar of Dad’s voice from the next room, and the uproar that follows his falling off the chair.
Drought has all but ruined the Rudd family 'selection’ in south-western Queensland, but Dad Rudd (Bert Bailey) and his wife (Alfreda Bevan) hold grimly to the land. He’s in debt to a ruthless neighbour, Old Carey (Len Budrick), who seizes his cattle in an attempt to get his hands on part of Rudd’s land. Carey’s son Jim (John Warwick) wants to get his hands on Kate Rudd (Molly Raynor), the eldest daughter. She’s keen, despite warnings from her long-standing suitor, Sandy Graham (Richard Fair), that Carey is up to no good. Kate goes to the city to relieve pressure on the family, but the rains come and the Rudds once again rebuild their stock.
When Kate returns, Jim Carey tries to force her into a marriage by threatening to sully her reputation. Sandy knocks him out, and Carey dies. As Kate frets over Sandy’s safety, Dave the eldest son (Fred MacDonald) marries his sweetheart, Lily White (Lilias Adeson), and Dad repeatedly rebuffs Billy Bearup (Fred Browne), who wants to marry Sarah (Bobbie Beaumont), the younger Rudd daughter. The youngest son Joe (Ossie Wenban) continually causes mischief, adding to his father’s woes. Sandy is eventually cleared of suspicion of murder, when Cranky Jack (Fred Kerry) admits his part in the death of Jim Carey. Kate and Sandy are then free to marry, to the delight of all the Rudds.
This version of On Our Selection may not have the rustic charm of Raymond Longford’s 1920 silent version, the first film made of Steele Rudd’s much-loved stories, but it did have one major asset – the power of speech. The Australian film industry had not produced a solid hit since For the Term of His Natural Life in 1927, and the country by 1931 was in the grip of the Great Depression. Australasian Films was in dire financial straits, and the cost of producing films with sound was hugely prohibitive. Frank Thring produced Diggers in Melbourne in that year with sound recording equipment imported at great expense from the USA, but the film was only moderately successful. On Our Selection was a major gamble, for several reasons.
Stuart Doyle, the hard-nosed head of Australasian Films and Union Theatres (soon to become Cinesound and Greater Union) entrusted the film to Ken G Hall, his personal assistant, who had never made a feature, let alone one with sound. Hall was then about 30, an experienced publicist who had also been a theatre manager and journalist, and a keen student of Hollywood film technique. Hall had been approached by Bert Cross, head of Australasian’s film laboratory in Bondi Junction, who claimed that he and a young Tasmanian sound engineer, Arthur Smith, had developed their own process for putting sound on film. This was completely independent of the systems that had been developed by Western Electric and RCA in the US, and using different technology. Hall convinced Doyle that it could work, and On Our Selection was the first feature on which the system was used.
The film may look quite static to modern eyes, but given the technical constraints under which it was made, it’s an absolutely astonishing feat in the history of Australian film. Cross and Smith developed not just a new recorder for shooting on location, they built a system that allowed Hall to shoot away from mains power, and another system that allowed the editor, George Malcolm, to play back sound in his editing room. Shooting the film in the Bondi Junction studio would have been difficult enough, but Hall managed to shoot most of the movie on location, at Castlereagh near Penrith, with live recording of sound.
The script comes more from the 1912 play, adapted by Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan, than directly from Steele Rudd’s 1899 book. The melodramatic story of the murder of Jim Carey, for example, is not in the original stories, and it jars with the broad comedy in this version of the film. Bailey had been touring the play successfully for twenty years when the idea for a sound film came up. Most of the cast came from the play, as did the style of declamatory acting. Ken Hall tried hard to open the play out with strong locations, but he later wrote that neither he nor Bert Bailey really understood at this early stage that the screen required a much-reduced style of acting. Even so, the film has some very effective humour, much of it verbal. It was a box-office sensation when it opened in mid-1932. Audiences applauded throughout, and the profits helped to save Australasian Films, and set up Cinesound as the major force it would become in Australian production – before the advent of World War Two shut down all production.
Indeed, it is fair to say that On Our Selection was the key film in restarting the Australian industry in the sound era. Cinesound went on to make seventeen features between 1932 and Smithy in 1946. All but one of them (Strike Me Lucky) made a profit. On Our Selection, according to Ken Hall in his autobiography, cost £6,000 to make and returned £70,000 to the distributor. Ken Hall’s movies got much better, but On Our Selection was the film that got him started.
Notes by Paul Byrnes
This black-and-white clip shows the extended Rudd family welcoming a guest, Mrs White (Dorothy Dunkley), when the unseemly entrance of Dad Rudd (Bert Bailey) in a nightshirt and suffering a toothache becomes the catalyst for a series of chaotic events. Having scared off Mrs White, Dad has his tooth pulled by Mr Maloney (John McGowan), which leads to Dad’s further slapstick suffering: he falls off a stool, sits on a hot iron and has water thrown over him.
Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia
Members of the Rudd family are sitting inside the house when a young woman opens the door and enters followed by a dressed-up woman.
Young woman This is Dave’s girl’s mother.
Mrs Rudd shakes her hand.
Mrs Rudd You’re welcome, Mrs White. How do you do? Have you met Mr Maloney?
Mrs White No.
Mr Maloney shakes Mrs White’s hand.
Mr Maloney Pleased to meet you.
Mrs White How are you?
Mrs Rudd And Uncle?
A crazy-looking, bent-over aged man comes over to shake Mrs Rudd’s hand.
Uncle How do you do? I’m Dave’s brother. You ain’t had the pleasure of meeting me before but the pleasure is all on my part.
Young woman Oh, will you shut up?
The young woman roughly pulls Uncle away.
Mrs Rudd Sit down.
Mrs White Thank you.
Young woman Mrs White, would you like a cup of tea?
Mrs White That’s what I would like.
Mrs White turns to Mrs Rudd.
Mrs White And I’d like to meet your husband. I’ve heard he’s a fine old gentleman.
Mrs Rudd Thank you.
The young woman talks quietly to Uncle.
Young woman Someone’s been lying to her!
Uncle smiles and nods.
Mrs Rudd Dad’s in bed with a terrible toothache. He fell in the creek.
Dad Rudd calls out from the next room, disputing this version of events.
Dad Rudd Maloney dipped me in. It was his rotten driving.
Mr Maloney I’m a better driver than ever you knew how to be.
Dad You couldn’t drive a starving cow into a paddock of grass.
Mr Maloney Why didn’t you hold onto them pigs?
Dad Hold onto the pigs, I’ll…
Dad comes out from the bedroom in his nightshirt with a bandage wrapped around his jaw. At the sight of him, Mrs White runs screaming out the door.
Dad Why, what’s the matter with him? Hold onto the pigs!
Dad is bundled back into the bedroom by Mrs Rudd and the young woman.
Mr Maloney I declare to Heaven the man has no trousers on.
Dave comes in.
Dave How’s Dad?
Mrs Rudd shakes her head.
Dave How are you, Dad?
Dad answers from the bedroom.
Dad Mind your own business.
Uncle He’s alright, Dave.
Dad comes out. He has removed the bandage around his jaw and is pulling his waistcoat on.
Dad Standing around like a lot of crows waiting for me to die.
He clutches his cheek in pain.
Dad Oh, ooh.
Uncle Whiskey’s the best cure in the world.
Mr Maloney opens Dad’s mouth.
Mr Maloney Let’s have a look at your tooth.
Mr Maloney jumps back.
Mr Maloney What do you want to bite me for?
Dad What do you want to go poking at it for? Don’t go poking at it!
Mr Maloney turns to Dave.
Mr Maloney How can we pull it?
Dave pulls a piece of string from his pocket.
Dave Will this do?
Mr Maloney Oh, that will do fine!
Dad tries to leave the room but Dave pushes him into a chair.
Dave Sit down there.
Uncle Got a touch of toothache meself.
Dad sits on the chair, his tooth attached to the piece of string. Mr Maloney pulls on the string.
Mr Maloney One, two, three!
Dad and his chair fall over.
Dad Ooh, ooh. You broke my jaw.
One of Dad’s young sons picks up the tooth.
Young son D-d-d-dad, can I have the tooth?
Dad No, you can’t have the tooth. I’m going to stuff it full of sugar and watch it ache.
Dad sits down on a hot iron.
Dad Holy Moses!
Mr Maloney By God, he’s on fire! Where’s the water?
Dad dances in pain. Dave spanks his bottom with a frying pan.
Dave It’s alright, Dad. It’s out.
Dad Ooh, thank you, Dave.
Mr Maloney rushes in with a bucket of water and tips it over Dad. Dad is enraged and rushes towards Mr Maloney, who runs out of the room.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.