Three of the four films shown by Pym are not specifically identified. The first looks like The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926) starring Adolphe Menjou and Florence Vidor. The other two are impossible to identify from the short clips shown. One seems to be something like a Tom Mix western. The last contains no recognizable stars and is possibly set in India. No film details nor copyright acknowledgements are included in the credits, except for the one identified film, On Our Selection (1920).
This movie was based on the real life experiences and adventures of Lyle Penn who, as a youth, accompanied his picture-show man father on the road in Australia exhibiting films.
Lyle Penn sent producer Joan Long his unpublished autobiographical manuscript on the early traveling picture shows after he saw her in a 1973 interview on Newcastle television in New South Wales. She was promoting her Australian film history documentaries The Pictures That Moved: Australian Cinema 1896-1920 (1968) and The Passionate Industry (1971) which she directed. Long eventually read the manuscript and Penn asked Long if she could collaborate on a new draft of it but she declined. Long recommended a writer to do this and mentioned that the property could be developed into a feature film, and ended up writing the screenplay for this film.
First Australian film starring expatriate Australian actor Rod Taylor after his phenomenal success in Hollywood where he had become an internationally renowned name. (He made his feature film debut in the Australian film "King of the Coral Sea" in 1954.
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