Charles Chauvel (1897-1959) garnered outstanding success with Forty Thousand Horseman would mean that he was less able to continue his career with Rats of Tobruk (1944) A World War II film starring Chips Rafferty, Peter Finch and Grant Taylor, who all began their screen careers under Hall's direction. Location work for both films was at the sandhills of Cronulla, near Sydney.
Cinesound, despite its remarkable success in the Thirties was permitted by its board to produce more feature films after the war. Ken Hall was commissioned by Columbia to make Smithy in 1946, the story of World War I fighter pilot Charles Kingford Smith, the first man to fly the Pacific from San Francisco to Brisbane in 1928. Though filmed at Cinesound with Hall's original crew, the feature was thoroughly financed by Columbia.
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| And there were 39,999 more where this guy came from. |
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 50 percent share in the entire Greater Union group of companies to the rapidly expanding English company of J. Arthur Rank.