''The Flying Doctor'' is a 1936 Australian-British drama film directed by

Miles Mander Miles Mander (born Lionel Henry Mander; 14 May 1888 – 8 February 1946), was an English character actor, writer, director and producer in the post-war period of early British cinema during the 1920s to mid-1930s, as well as a playwright an ...

and starring Charles Farrell, Mary Maguire and

James Raglan James Raglan (6 January 1901 – 15 November 1961) was a British stage, film and television actor. In Australia Early in 1935 he was brought out to Australia with the Gabriel Toyne company by J. C. Williamson, playing ''Laburnum Grove'' and ...

. The

Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an Aeromedical retrieval, aeromedical retrieval service in Australia and the largest of its kind in the world. It is a non-profit organisation that provides urgen ...

operate in the Australian

Outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than Australian bush, the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastli ...

. Noted as Australia's first "sound" feature film, ''The Flying Doctor'' was also the country's first feature-length film based on

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' include fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as h ...

Plot

On his wedding night, Sandy Nelson ( Charles Farrell) decides to abandon his young bride, Jenny ( Mary Maguire) to go work in Sydney as a painter on the Harbour Bridge. He befriends a doctor, John Vaughan (

), who is in love with a married woman. Vaughan decides to acquire his flying license in order to accept a job as flying doctor in the outback. Sandy gets in a brawl at a cricket match, serves time in prison, then heads for the outback and discovers gold. He is shot in a barroom fight and loses his eyesight. He then discovers Vaughan has fallen in love with Jenny, his former bride. When he realises Jenny loves Vaughan, Sandy decides to kill himself, leaving his fortune to the Flying Doctors.

Cast

* Charles Farrell as Sandy Nelson * Mary Maguire as Jenny Rutherford *

as Doctor John Vaughan * Joe Valli as Dodger Green *

Margaret Vyner Margaret Leila Vyner, also known by her married name Margaret Williams (3 December 1914 in Armidale, New South Wales – 30 October 1993 in Reading, England) was an Australian-born model and actress who appeared in British films. She collabora ...

as Betty Webb * Eric Colman as Geoffrey Webb * Tom Lurich as Blotch Burns * Maudie Edwards as Phyllis * Katie Towers as Mrs. O'Toole * Phillip Lytton as Doctor Gordon Rutherford * Andrew Beresford as John Rutherford * Jack Clarke as Pop Schnitzel * Phil Smith as Barman Joe *

Donald Bradman Sir Donald George Bradman (27 August 1908 – 25 February 2001), nicknamed "The Don", was an Australian international cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time. His cricketing successes have been claimed by Shane ...

as Himself *

William Hartnell William Henry Hartnell (; 8 January 1908 – 23 April 1975) was an English actor, who is best known for portraying the first incarnation of the Doctor, in the long-running British science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' from 1963 t ...

as Abe McKeller

Original Novel

The film was based on a novel by Robert Waldron which was published in 1934. It was Waldron's first book. The novel was adapted for radio in 1934.

Premise

Dr John Vaughan is rejected by his fiancée. He goes to work in Cloncurry for the Flying Doctors with his childhood friend Ann as a nurse. His fiancée re enters his life.

Production

National Productions

''The Flying Doctor'' was the first and only production from National Productions, a new Australian film production company which was formed in the 1930s under the management of Frederick Daniell, a promoter involved with radio and newspaper companies in Sydney. Amongst its directors were Sir Hugh Denison, Sir Samuel Walder and Sir James Murdoch. The company was closely associated with National Studios Ltd, which built a large studio complex in Pagewood, Sydney.Pike and Cooper 1998, p. 172. It was incorporated in September 1935 with capital of £50,000.

Pre-production

National Productions had links to the British company,

Gaumont British The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was a British company that produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was established as an offshoot of France's Gaumont. Film production Gaumont-British was fou ...

, which had been interested in making a film in Australia for a long time, with

Robert Flaherty Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, '' Nanook of the North'' (1922). The film made his reputati ...

intending to shoot one. Gaumont provided technical and financial support for the company. Gaumont British provided several personnel for the film, including the director, writer, cinematographer, unit manager and sound recordist. National Productions also hired Englishman Errol Hinds to be head of the camera department for two years. The British unit arrived in November 1935. In December, American star Charles Farrell was signed to play the lead. He did not arrive until late January 1936.

Shooting

Shooting began in 1936 with bad weather helping the budget increase. The film was shot at National Studio's Pagewood facility. Director Miles Mander left for Hollywood in March 1936, leaving J.O.C. Orton to finish the film.

Reception

Mary Maguire lived in Brisbane, so it was decided to hold the film's international premiere there.

20th Century-Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Com ...

agreed to distribute the film free of charge. Box office receipts were poor but the release of the film led to a flood of donations to the flying doctors. Reviews were patchy. Aviation film historian Stephen Pendo in ''Aviation in the Cinema'' (1985), described ''The Flying Doctor'' as "lackluster."

decided not to distribute the film in the UK and it was done by

General Film Distributors General Film Distributors (GFD), later known as J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors and Rank Film Distributors Ltd., was a British Empire, British film distribution company based in London. It was active between 1935 and 1996, and from 1937 it was p ...

. ''The Flying Doctor'' was never released in the USA. National Productions had prior to shooting announced intention to make three more films but none of these were made."Picture Films."
''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuous ...

'', 8 January 1936, p. 12 via National Library of Australia. Retrieved: 12 August 2012.

Preservation status

''The Flying Doctor'' was thought to have been lost until workmen clearing a building site in the Wollongong suburb of

Fig Tree ''Ficus'' ( or ) is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes and hemiepiphytes in the family (biology), family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few spe ...

uncovered a film vault. They cut through the steel door using an oxy torch – somehow avoiding igniting the highly flammable

nitrate film Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitration, nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitri ...

inside – and loaded a truck with the contents to take away for disposal.Edmondson and Pike 1982, p. 38. An office worker saw the truck drive by, loaded with film cans, gave chase in his car, and rescued the film, which included the first eight of nine reels of ''The Flying Doctor''. Two years later, the BFI National Film Archive in London found a copy of the shortened, re-edited British release of the film, also eight reels long, in the possession of a large film company. Despite this print having been "totally rearranged", the last reel was found to take up exactly where the Australian one left off.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* Beck, Simon D. ''The Aircraft-Spotter's Film and Television Companion''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2016. . * Edmondson, Ray and Pike, Andrew
''Australia's Lost Films'' (PDF).
Parkes, Australia: National Library of Australia, 1982. * Paris, Michael. ''From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun: Aviation, Nationalism, and Popular Cinema.'' Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995. . * Pendo, Stephen. ''Aviation in the Cinema''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1985. . * Pike, Andrew and Ross Cooper. ''Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production''. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998. .

External links

''The Flying Doctor''
at

National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting, and providing access to a national c ...

''The Flying Doctor''
at Oz Movies {{DEFAULTSORT:Flying Doctor, The 1936 films 1936 drama films Australian drama films British drama films Australian aviation films Films directed by Miles Mander Gainsborough Pictures films 1930s rediscovered films Australian black-and-white films Rediscovered British films Rediscovered Australian films 1930s English-language films 1930s British films English-language drama films