Written by Steven Vagg
A blockbuster Australian movie that comes to mind.
What is the most profitable Australian film of all time? No one knows for sure – it’s almost impossible to get accurate financial data in show business – but someone might be wondering if Mad Max vs. Crocodile Dundee Before we get caught up in the debate, we’d like to throw another contender into the mix – or rather, the 1912 John Lee, Or the Man Who Couldn’t Hang and its 1921 A remake version of.
Yes, you heard that right. We’re talking about two movies that are over 100 years old. The first is reported to have been made for 300 pounds, while the second is probably no more. Within 13 years, the pair had a combined income of £50,000 worldwide.
Now, that’s a pretty good rate of return.
Of course, the film’s budget and box office figures have to be taken with a grain of salt, and that £50,000 figure is just an estimate. (One report says the 1912 film cost £20,000; another says the 1921 film cost £27,000.) And sure enough, we’re looking at two films instead of one. talking about.
Despite this, it still brought in significant profits, especially considering the fact that the film was also successful in New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In fact, The Man They Could Not Hang was arguably Australia’s first international blockbuster.
What makes this achievement even more amazing is that everyone was surprised by it. Oz film historians Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper called the 1912 film “the most extraordinary ‘sleeper’ ever made in Australian film history”. Everyone calls me “weird”.
Neither picture featured any stars or famous directors. The script is based on a play that was popular, but not very popular. Although the story was well known, the grueling process it took to obtain the film rights was less well known. In fact, the film rights were originally transferred by the original author without much thought. And please understand this. Even the producers of the 1912 version of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang didn’t see any long-term commercial value in their film, essentially handing over ownership to some of their colleagues for free. I was there.
So why was it such a hit?
The Man They Could Not Hang is based on, you guessed it, the true story of John Lee, a British man (all stories are set in England) who famously survived being hanged three times. In the 1880s, Lee was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Executions took place, but the trapdoor to the gallows failed to open not once, not twice, but three times (apparently all on the same day). After this, authorities gave up and Lee’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was released in 1907.
The incident became a tabloid sensation, and Lee earned money by writing about his life in 1908. This account was later turned into a stage play that heavily fictionalized the events. From what we can gather, there were several different stage versions in circulation. Back then, copyright laws were a little faster and looser. An Englishman named Claude Murrell wrote a play called The Man Who Couldn’t Hang, and Frank Davenport, an Australian actor living in New Zealand, also tried his hand at writing the script. Davenport said he originally read about the Lee case in a book he picked up in Wellington, New Zealand. He wrote a fabricated stage version of the love story and comedy, revealing Lee to be innocent (there is information that the real Lee was a little more eccentric) and accusing the British government of wrongfully imprisoning Lee. They made up a coda to pay compensation. (Davenport considered it an important reason behind the play’s popularity, as it offered a happier ending).
From 1911 to 1912, Davenport toured New Zealand and Australia with the play. It wasn’t a blockbuster like, say, Struck Oil (the corny old soap opera that was the basis of J.C. Williamson’s Australian fortune), but it was particularly popular in the countryside, and clearly The audience couldn’t get enough. A flawed trapdoor and hints at divine intervention.
Davenport’s success impressed Philip Lytton, a tent theater entrepreneur (that is, he traveled from town to town performing in tents rather than theaters), who bought the rights from him. Lytton’s tent production of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang went well, and he decided to make the play into a film. This was very common at the time. Most Australian films made before World War I (including The Kelly Gang) were stage plays adapted for the screen by theatrical entrepreneurs.
The official title of Lytton’s film was originally “In the Shadow of the Scaffold, or The Man They Could Not Hang.” The film was shown in theaters from 1912 to 1913, and from what we can gather, it was okay, but not great. According to newspaper advertisements from the time, Lytton seems to have had trouble getting this work into theaters, and was probably too busy concentrating on stage shows, so be careful with distribution. One columnist later claimed that Mr. Lytton was “disgusted” by the film.
Anyway, Lytton decided to transfer ownership of his films (or sell them for a very low price) to two employees, Frederick Halladane and Arthur Sterry, actors who could devote themselves full-time to films. . (Lytton may have felt sorry for Sterry, whose wife had recently gone missing at sea). They took The Man Who Couldn’t Hang to Newcastle in 1916, and one of them lectured the audience during screenings of the film. To everyone’s surprise, this season was a huge hit, with all sessions sold out. This was not an oddity for Newcastle, and the film’s success was repeated in other towns, including Sydney, where The Man Who Couldn’t Hang was a huge hit in 1917. Two years later, the ad claimed the film had been seen by over a million people across Australia, which at the time had a population of just over five million. The paper called it “very crude but popular.”
Stelly and Halladan decided to remake The Man Who Couldn’t Hang in 1921 with a new cast. I don’t know exactly why I did this. Maybe the original print was faded, maybe they were a little embarrassed by the 1912 version, maybe they wanted to expand it to more than an hour, or maybe they wanted to renew the copyright. They just thought it was a way to make more cash, or a combination of the above. Unlike most Australian silent films, copies of this version survive and can be viewed here.
The 1921 version of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang isn’t bad. It’s not in the same league as, say, Sentimental Broke (1919), but it’s perfectly adequate by the standards of the time, and well shot by Tasman Higgins. Industry publication Everyones said the film had a “very flimsy narrative structure and lacked much substance,” but that “the title packs a punch and the subject matter has enough morbid interest.” “You can definitely see a wide range of works.” Your patronage.” Variety magazine called the movie “the worst movie ever made,” which it wasn’t by any means, but I think Variety was pissed that the movie was so popular.
This version of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang also kept people packed. And it became a box office sensation not only in Australia, but also in New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom (though it was banned in South Africa, where the government probably didn’t ban it). hope that the public will lose confidence in the reliability of the scaffolding). The film remained in cinemas until the late 1920s and was arguably Australian cinema’s first true international blockbuster.
Why was it a hit?
There is usually some obvious reason for these things. For example, another Australian silent-era freak hit, The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell, made around £25,000 at a reported production cost of £450. This seems to be mainly due to timing. The film dramatized the execution of British nurse Edith Cavell by Germans in October 1915 and was released in cinemas by January 1916. It thus became the first film to depict the war’s greatest propaganda story.
There was no clearer explanation for the success of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang, either the 1912 version or the 1921 remake. Pike and Cooper acknowledged that the reasons for the film’s success “remain a mystery” and suggested that the story may have appealed “to both the lecherous and the devout members of the community.”
The story of an innocent person who is falsely accused is always a solid drama. The fact that it was based on a real incident was sexy, and so was the whole three-run botched run – high concept, as they say. Setting the story in England would probably help internationally – no one needed to explain where England was. The film spends a lot of time with Lee’s character before anything interesting happens to him, which creates empathy for the character. Recent reviews say that Haldane and Stelly gave an excellent lecture and added to the audience’s enjoyment.
But how to be that successful? There must have been something else.
Our theory is that the story of The Man Who Couldn’t Hang took on this unexpected resonance during and after World War I. The conflict tore Australia apart, with almost everyone knowing someone was killed or injured, and the country divided over issues such as conscription, religion, and industrial relations. Somehow, this story is ostensibly based on a real incident (which gives it a sense of verisimilitude), in which an innocent person who is unjustly persecuted escapes death through (seemingly) divine intervention, and the truth is revealed. It has a theme of finding love and compensation from the government and getting back on your feet. It really spoke to the people of the time and continued to speak for several years after the war. Not only Australia, but New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom were all deeply affected by the war.
In 1934, producers decided to remake The Man Who Couldn’t Be Hanged as a sound picture. This makes perfect sense. The most popular early Australian sound films were remakes of silent hits (On Our Selection, The Squatter’s Daughter, The Haysies, The Silence of Dean Maitland). So producer Joe Lippman blew the dust off The Man Who Couldn’t Hang, hired Raymond Longford to direct, and cast Arthur Stelly in a key role as Lee’s father.
This story was a huge hit from 1916 until the late 1920s. I’m sure people will be excited by the added charm of the sound, right?
Well, no, but it is. The 1934 version was not a blockbuster, but it made some money, especially in the countryside. Reviews were poor, and Longford never directed again. It certainly didn’t have the same impact as the silent version. Perhaps this story was suitable for a silent film. Maybe too much time has passed.
There’s always, always, an element of mystery and magic behind why some movies are commercially successful and others aren’t. And nowhere was this more true than in The Man Who Couldn’t Hang.
Still, this is a film that should be remembered and discussed. Because anything that’s this popular with viewers says something about us as a nation at the time, even if it’s not exactly clear what it was.
Thanks to Graham Shirley for his help with this article. All opinions and errors are those of the author.
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