Charles Chauvel (1897-1959)'s outstanding success with his feature Forty Thousand Horseman would assure him an illustrious career, proof's pudding presented itself with the release of Rats of Tobruk in 1944, a World War II film that starred Peter Finch, Grant Taylor and Chips Rafferty, all of whom embarked on their screen careers under the direction of Kenneth Hall. The on-location filming took place at one of the sand dunes of Cronulla near Sydney, Australia.
Cinesound, despite its astounding success in the 1930s was informed by their board that they were no longer permitted to make feature films after the war. Hall was commissioned by Columbia to make Smithy in 1946, a story of the World War I fighter pilot Charles Kingford Smith, who happened to be the first man to fly the Pacific from San Francisco to Brisbane in the year 1928. Though shot at Cinesound with Hall's original crew, the feature was thoroughly financed by Columbia.
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| What's it all about Smithy? From 1946 |
By the time Norman Bede Rydge, who succeeded Stuart Doyle as managing director of Greater Union when he was deposed in 1936, had sold a fifty-percent share in the entire Greater Union group of companies in the rapidly expanding English company of J. Arthur Rank. The outlook for further feature production at Cinesound almost immediately became grim. The Rank policy, as later expressed in Australia by executive John David was to make films in England, since they had the equipment, the studios and the talent and to show them in Australia, among other places, Rydge took the safe bet and complied, for as an accountant, Rydge was more than aware of the risks of the creative side of the film industry.