The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906-10)

Philippe Mora & Michael Organ

Contents

Cinematic milestone
Anything but silent!
What about America?
Kelly vs. Custer
Pushing ..it up hill
Epilogue
References

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1. A cinematic milestone

The world's first feature film was the Australian-made five-reeler The Story of the Kelly Gang aka The Kelly Gang, which premiered in Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide on Boxing Day, 26 December 1906. It was made by Millard Johnson and W.A. Gibson of St. Kilda, with the financial and production support of the theatre entrepreneurial firm J. & N. Tait. At the Melbourne Atheneum Theatre premiere it ran for 100 minutes at the then standard projection speed of 16 frames per second.

This was an historic event, and the Australians knew it at the time, for it was the first film to take up a complete program in this way. Prior to that, and since the introduction of cinema at the turn of the century, the presentation of numerous filmic shorts running for less than ten minutes had become the norm, and there was a fear that audience would not accept extended filming presentations. Rather, they would prefer shorts and leave the longer works to the plays they were used to. However, times were changing, and audiences soon warmed to the cinema-going experience, at a time when film was mostly shown in theatres and local halls, or out of doors. For example, during December 1901 Millard Johnson presented 18 such shorts to a large crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, mostly acquired from the American Edison studio and comprising some 2,700 feet of film.

The increase to feature length was a slow process, as the technical, narrative and artistic elements of cinema evolved around the world. By 1903 the Americans had released the landmark The Great Train Robbery which ran for 17 minutes and was innovative in its camera work and narrative. As to length, during the first half of 1906 the 1904 English documentary four-reeler Living London was a financial success for the initial Johnson / Gibson / Tait collaboration, running for 80 minutes. It provided evidence that audiences could remain seated for films lasting more than 10 minutes, if the presentation was interesting enough. It remains so to this day.

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2. Anything but silent!

By the time of its release at the end of 1906, The Story of the Kelly Gang was accompanied in theatres by music, sound effects, narration and a variety of promotional material, including a booklet with synopsis and still photographs to aid audiences in following the onscreen narrative. A revised version of The Story of the Kelly Gang was released in 1910 with intertitles, whilst the film had continued to be shown across Australia in the intervening years. Unfortunately no complete copy of the film survives. Of the original five reels, only less than a single reel, comprising bits and pieces in varying condition and running for just on 21 minutes, exists in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and possibly some private collections. A video of that content is presented below.

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906-10) - Australian silent feature film movie, YouTube, duration: 20.51 minutes. Source: The Video Cellar, compiled 2013.

Between 1906-10 the film also went on to see releases in New Zealand and Great Britain. Yet, as far as the present author is aware, The Story of the Kelly Gang never saw the light of day in the United States, or Europe for that matter. The former is strange, to say the least, and the question must be asked: Why?

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3. What about America?

By 1906 the American film industry, then based in New York, was quickly becoming the world leader in cinema production, moving beyond the early players in France and England which had swamped their screens during that first decade of the new century. By 1912 film production had largely moved to the west coast town of Hollywood, near Los Angeles, and never looked back. However, by the time Johnson and Gibson were working on their film in and around Melbourne, Victoria, America was quickly becoming the source of much of the footage then being shown in Australia, with a proliferation of documentary and to a lesser degree dramatic shorts being produced by firms such as Edison and Biograph, and exported around the world in the pursuit of financial returns. From 1901 Millard Johnson had presented Edison shorts throughout Victoria, selling out to the American firm in 1905.

Just as England and France had been pioneers of cinema, likewise Australia got in the game very early on, with the Melbourne Salvation Army setting up its Limelight Department in 1891, a studio in 1894, and releasing its initial lantern slide and film production Soldiers of the Cross in 1900. Australian shorts of a mostly documentary nature then began to appear, including film of local boxing matches, street scenes and events such as the Melbourne Cup horse race. Arising out of this, during the second half of 1906 Millard Johnson and W.A. Gibson made The Story of the Kelly Gang. Some 10,000 feet (ten reels) of film was shot by Gibson and edited down to the initial release version. During the 1906-7 premiere season it was a financial success, and this obviously spurred the Taits on to seek overseas release. They had obtained from Johnson and Gibson worldwide copyright to the production and made use of that in their efforts to promote the film and ensure that any financial returns came their way. Yet despite all this activity, the question of an American release remains historically mute. What happened?

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4. Kelly vs. Custer

An extended, six reel print of The Story of the Kelly Gang was sent to the UK in 1907. It is therefore very likely that the same occurred with the US. But did it? Consideration of this issue by archivist and historian Michael Organ followed on a brief discussion in August 2024 with US-based and Melbourne-born Australian film maker Philippe Mora. According to Mora - director of the infamous 1976 Australian bushranger feature Mad Dog Morgan starring American Dennis Hopper - there is all likelihood that a copy did reach there, but the film was never publically released as such, though was likely seen by select groups and fellow burgeoning film makers. As possible evidence of this he points to the 1912 two-reel film Custer's Last Fight, directed by Francis Ford (1881-1953), brother of the famous director John Ford, who would go on to define the classic Hollywood Western.

Mora suggests that Custer's Last Fight has a similar "vibe" to The Story of the Kelly Gang and obviously replicates it in parts. A copy of the updated 1925 release of the film is freely available on YouTube:

Custer's Last Fight, 1912 [1925], YouTube, duration: 42.46 minutes.

If The Story of the Kelly Gang was seen, why then was it not released? Were the Taits unable to secure a local distributor? Did Johnson and Gibson continue to encounter blockages when they attempted to release their 1910 edition of the film on the international stage? Was this one of the reasons Millard Johnson left England in 1912 (after an extensive stay) and took up a position in America to both sell Australian films and buy American product for the local market?

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5. Pushing ..it up hill

One of the Tait brothers had been in the UK during 1905, and whilst there was able to secure the rights for the Australian release of Living London. This proved a financial win for all parties involved. Did he then take a trip to the US to try and sell Kelly, and find the task unachievable? Was the US film industry in 1907-8 at such an early stage of development that it did not have in place mechanisms for the release of independent overseas films? The answer to that that question is both yes and no, for the Americans by that time had built up links with the British and French production companies. However, the idea of dealing with Australian's was nothing if not novel. There were numerous Australian actors and technicians and artists working in America, but their influence in this regard was likely minimal. We can only wonder what happened to Ned and his gang when they arrive in New York circa 1907-8? The Taits most probably found opposition from one party in particular, namely Thomas Alva Edison.

The formation in December 1908 of the aggressive Motion Pictures Patents Company, also known as the Edison Trust, which sought to "protect" a coterie of US film makers from the so-called "domination of foreign films on US screens" and local independents, would have made it very difficult for Australia's The Story of the Kelly Gang to find an entry into the US market at that point in time. This is despite its obvious significance as a "first" - something which surely irked the Americans at the time, and something which they successfully downplayed. The power of the Edison Trust, which operated through to 1915, is reflected in its membership, as the following Wikipedia extract reveals:

[It comprised] all the major US film companies and local foreign-branches: Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig Polyscope, Lubin Manufacturing, Kalem Company, Star Film Paris, American Pathé, the leading film distributor George Kleine, and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak. (Wikipedia 2024)

The film industry in the US during that first decade of the twentieth century was a free-for-all in regard to production, release, copyright infringement and strong-arm tactics used by all sides to enable their successful operation. This aspect of American history is revealed in the following episode from the famous 1980 British Hollywood - A Celebration of American Silent Film thirteen-part documentary series, of which episode 2 is titled The Beginning:

Kevin Brownlow & David Gill, Hollywood - The Beginning, ITV, 1980, YouTube, duration: 54.41 minutes.

James Mason's narration highlights the criminality of aspects of the American film industry at the time of the Kelly film release. It may provide an answer as to why the film was buried and disappeared without a trace. There is no doubt that, over time and through to the present day, the American film industry has been a cut-throat business, happy to steal the ideas and creations of others, both local and foreign, and Americanise them. A good example is their treatment of Akira Kurosowa's three and a half-hour Japanese classic from 1954, The Seven Samurai, which was cut down for the American release and later remade as the blockbuster The Magnificent Seven. Such may have been the fate of The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) - a mere lesson for American film makers, rather than a release. The first full-length American feature came in 1909 with the four-reeler Les Miserables, a retelling of the Victor Hugo classic novel from 1862.

According to Occam's Razor, the Fords, DeMille, Edison et al., as young Turks of early film, would have been keenly aware of the financial success of the long form Kelly feature. After all, it was also a hit in London and this was their business. A longer film also meant a higher ticket price. Their Custer film has the striking similarity to the Kelly film in mythologizing a disaster and a controversial man, albeit Custer was a racist and his killings were government sanctioned, whilst Kelly was an outlaw. Outlaws then became a staple of cinema and still are. The sensationalism of the death of both figures lingers today in the obvious perceived commercialism of such characters. Gangsters often hijacked early movies in story and still do. One can also speculate that the Kelly and Custer movies were also efforts consciously or unconsciously to create national myths or identity. Both became national icons in fledgling democracies and one can argue cinema was central to that development.

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6. Epilogue

As an ironic personal note, Mora's 1976 Mad Dog Morgan outlaw film was, in a reversal, the first Australian film to get a forty screen release in Los Angeles and New York.

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7. References

Bertrand, Ina and William D. Routt, 'The picture that will live forever': The Story of the Kelly Gang, Series: The Moving Image, number 8, Australian Teachers of Media, St. Kilda, 2007, 197p.

Cranston, Jack, When flicks were flicks: The Kelly Gang film of 1906, Melbourne, circa 1985, 159p.

Edmondson, Ray and Andrew Pike, Australia's Lost Film - The Loss and Rescue of Australia's Silent Cinema, National Library of Australia, 1982, 96p.

Farewell dinner to Millard Johnson, The Bioscope, London, May-June 1912, 617.

Franklin, Joe, Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury, Citadel, Secausus, New Jersey, 1959, 255p.

Gaunson, Stephen, The Ned Kelly Films: A Cultural History of Kelly History, Intellect Books, 2013, 132p.

Percival, Jack, "Kelly Gang" film Began Era of "Feature" Pictures, The Sunday Herald, Sydney, 9 October 1949.

Reade, Eric, Early Australian Silent Film: A Pictorial History, 1896-1929, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1970.

Shirley, Graham and Sally Jackson, The Story of the Kelly Gang - Restoring the World's First Feature, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, 2023.

The Story of the Kelly Gang, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra, DVD + Booklet, 2007.

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Last updated: 31 August 2024

Michael Organ, Australia

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The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906-10) - an American release?

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