The Gentleman Bushranger
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''The Gentleman Bushranger'' is a 1921 Australian film melodrama from director
Beaumont Smith Frank Beaumont "Beau" Smith (15 August 1885 – 2 January 1950), was an Australian film director, producer and exhibitor, best known for making low-budget comedies. Smith made his first film in 1917, '' Our Friends, the Hayseeds''. He went on ...
. Bushranging films were banned at the time but Smith got around this by making the plot about a man falsely accused of being a bushranger.


Plot

In 1857, an Englishman, Richard Lavender (Ernest Hearne), is travelling to Australia on a ship where he meets the beautiful Kitty Aronson. He is falsely accused by Peter Dargin ( Tal Ordell) of murdering the ship's captain and is arrested. With the escape of an aboriginal friend, he escapes into the bush where he becomes a gold prospector. He meets Kitty, who runs a nearby selection, and they happily mine gold together until Dargin arrives and frames him for bushranger crimes. However Lavender ultimately proves his innocence. Comic relief is provided by Ah Wom Bat (John Cosgrove), a Chinese cook, and a touring theatrical company that presents a version of '' East Lynne'' in a country town.


Cast

* Dot McConville as Kitty Anson * Ernest T Hearne as Richard Lavender * Tal Ordell as Peter Dargin * John Cosgrove as Ah Wom Bat * Nada Conrade * Monica Mack * J.P. O'Neill * Robert MacKinnon * Fred Phillips *
Henry Lawson Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial perio ...
as himself


Production

Female star Dot McConville was advertised as "the Commonwealth's premier horsewoman". The segment showing the troupe performing ''East Lynne'' was likely taken from a short films directed by John Cosgrove, ''An East Lynne Fiasco'' (1917). The movie was shot in four weeks in October 1921. Two and a half weeks were spent on location in Bowral and Berrima, with interiors shot in Sydney at the Rushcutters Bay Studio.Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, ''Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production'', Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998, 111.


Reception

* ''The Bulletin'' said the film "has some wonderfully beautiful scenic bits, but the story is a painful libel on 'A Stripe for Trooper Casey,' which it professes to follow, and is beneath criticism. So is the producing, and a great deal of the acting." * The Sydney ''Sun'' had no problem with the adaptation of Quinn's novel, but was distressed by
anachronistic An anachronism (from the Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type ...
hairstyles and costumes, and found much of the acting uninspired.


References


External links

*
''The Gentleman Bushranger''
at National Film and Sound Archive {{DEFAULTSORT:Gentleman Bushranger, The 1922 films 1922 Western (genre) films 1922 drama films Australian black-and-white films Australian drama films Bushranger films Films directed by Beaumont Smith Melodrama films Silent Australian Western (genre) films Silent drama films