''Dawn!'' is a 1979 Australian sports

biopic A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudr ...

about the three-time

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

gold medallist swimmer

Dawn Fraser Dawn Fraser (born 4 September 1937) is an Australian freestyle champion swimmer and former politician. She is one of only four swimmers to have won the same Olympic individual event three times – in her case the women's 100-metre freestyle ...

, who served as technical adviser for the production, it starring Bronwyn Mackay Payne and

Bunney Brooke Dorothy Cronin (9 January 1920 – 2 April 2000), professionally known as Bunney Brooke, was an Australian actress, creator, producer, director, designer, playwright and casting agent, best known for her being one of the early faces of Aust ...

, written by Joy Cavill and directed by

Ken Hannam Ken Hannam (12 July 1929 – 16 November 2004) was an Australian film and television director who also worked in British television drama. Career Born in St Kilda, Melbourne, the eldest of three boys, Hannam lived in his youth in Sydney and ...

. The film was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival.

Plot

The film deals with Dawn Fraser's rise to fame as a champion

swimmer, her anti-authoritarian clashes with Australian Swimming officials, her triumphs, marriage and eventual divorce.

Cast

*Bronwyn Mackay-Payne as

Ron Haddrick Ronald Norman Haddrick (9 April 1929 – 11 February 2020) was an Australian actor, cricketer, narrator and presenter. In 2012, he received the Actors Equity Lifetime Achievement Award for his long and distinguished career in media, spanning s ...

... ''Pop'' *

... ''Mum'' * Tom Richards ... ''Harry'' *

John Diedrich John Edwin Diedrich (born 25 February 1953 in Melbourne, Victoria) is an Australian actor, director, producer and singer, known for stage and television roles in Australia and the UK. He played the lead role of Curly in the 1980 West End revi ...

... ''Gary'' *Gabrielle Hartley ... ''Kate'' * Ivar Kants ... ''Len'' *David Cameron ... ''Joe'' *Kevin Wilson ... ''Bippy''

Production

The film was produced by Joy Cavill who had previously made a documentary, '' The Dawn Fraser Story'' (1964). In the 1970s Cavill wrote a script based on Fraser's life and showed it to

Jill Robb Jill Robb (1934 – 16 January 2022) was an English-born Australian film producer and executive who worked mostly in Australia. Biography Robb began in the film industry as a stand in for Jill Adams on ''Dust in the Sun'' (1958). Robb was a fo ...

and John Morris of the

South Australian Film Corporation South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) is a South Australian Government statutory corporation established in 1972 to engage in film production and promote the film industry, located in Adelaide, South Australia. The Adelaide Studios are managed ...

. They agrees to put up $250,000 and raise the balance of the money in exchange for 50% of the profits. The lead, Bronwyn Mackay-Payne, was cast after a search that involved interviewing 1,200 girls and screen testing ten. Mackay-Payne had never acted before. Shooting began on 19 September 1977 and went for ten weeks, with studio work in Adelaide and location shooting in Balmain, Sydney, Melbourne Olympic Stadium, and Tokyo.

Reception

The film performed disappointingly at the box office.

References

External links