Cinesound Productions
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Cinesound Productions Limited was one of Australia's first feature film production companies. Established in June 1932, Cinesound developed out of a group of companies centered around Greater Union Theaters, that covered all facets of the film process, from production, to distribution and exhibition.
Cinesound Productions established a film studio as a subsidiary of Greater Union Theaters based on the Hollywood model. The first production was On Our Selection, which was an enormous financial success.
[edit] Establishment
Stuart Doyle and Ken Hall were the major figures involved in the establishment of Cinesound in 1932. Stuart Doyle was the Managing Director of Greater Union Theaters, and it was his desire to encourage an Australian film industry that provided the impetus for Cinesound to develop. Doyle appointed his then personal assistant, Ken Hall, to the position of General Manager of Cinesound, and also put him in charge as supervisor of production. In this role, Ken Hall directed all but one of the seventeen films that Cinesound produced and also handled the business affairs of the company.
Both Doyle and Hall were very committed to the notion of showmanship which encompassed ideas relating to the type of entertainment the public would want to enjoy, and how to effectively publicise that entertainment to the masses. The publicity campaign for The Squatter's Daughter, and it's star Jocelyn Howarth, was particularly imbued with this concept. They were also interested in creating a star system along Hollywood lines promoting the idea that Cinesound was a "little Hollywood." It was this dedication to showmanship that led to all but one of Cinesound's feature films making a profit from the first release, and all of the films eventually at least broke even.
[edit] 1940's
Cinesound Productions produced feature films until the Second World War, when it was considered that feature films were too great a financial risk to undertake. Cinesound then concentrated on producing the Cinesound Review, a newsreel that they had been generating to exhibit alongside their feature films.
After the war, a British producer and exhibitor named J. Arthur Rank bought a controlling interest in Greater Union, and used the theater chain primarily to exhibit British films, whilst discouraging local feature production. Hence Cinesound never regained its place as a major local film producer, and Australian film production was almost non-existent for the next two decades.
In 1940 the Australian Government decided to channel news footage to the public through the existing newsreel companies, Cinesound and Movietone. In the same year Cinesound abandoned feature production for the duration of the war.
In 1942 Cinesound provided the operational base for the film unit of the US Signal Corps to prepare newsreels for viewing to American troops in the South West Pacific theater of the war.
In 1946 Arrangements were made with the commercial film distribution companies to distribute selected Commonwealth Film Unit productions in Australian cinemas on a commercial basis. Similar arrangements existed for the release of general sponsored documentaries produced by Movietone and Cinesound.
Other Australian producers were almost totally deprived of access to commercial cinema screens.
Despite the success of Ken G Hall's last feature, Smithywhich was backed by Columbia Pictures as a means of repatriating frozen currency held in Australia due to wartime restrictions, Greater Union Theatres decided not to resume post war production through Cinesound.
