AustLit
Compiled by Dr Catriona Mills and Dr Arti Singh
- Australians and Adaptations
- Adaptations on Australian Screens: A Brief Introduction
- Adaptations on the Australian Screen in the Silent Era, 1900-1929
- Australian Writers Adapted Internationally
- Adaptations on Television
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Data Visualisation: Adaptations from 2010-2019
- Data Visualisation: Adaptations from 2010-2019
- —. Graph 1: All Adaptations by Form
- Performance Works
- —. Graph 2: Film and Television
- —. Graph 3: Drama
- —. Graph 4: Musical Theatre
- Spotlight: Comparing Film/TV, Drama, and Musical Theatre
- Written Works
- —. Graph 5: Novels
- —. Graph 6: Picture Books
- —. Graph 7: Graphic Novels
- Spotlight: Comparing Novels, Picture Books, and Graphic Novels
- The Frequently Adapted
- Acknowledgements
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For its first twenty-nine years—from the making of Soldiers of the Cross in 1900 until the 1930 edict of the Commonwealth Film Prize that only talkies would be eligible for its bounty—the Australian film industry was silent (notwithstanding the accompanying music, the burlesques of talking films, and the constant experimentation with sound-making devices, that is).
And in that era of silent film-making, film-makers were constantly seeking source material from which to satisfy increasing demand.
As at late 2020, AustLit has records for over 350 films made in Australia between 1900 and 1929, the years of silent film-making. And many of those films are drawn from other source material, including drama, novels, and poetry.
Note: these lists should not be taken as a complete list of all the adaptations in AustLit. For a complete list of all the films produced in Australia between 1900 and 1930 and adapted from another source, click here.
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Explore those Australian-made films that owed the kernel of their plots to another work.
To prevent unwieldy lists, the adaptations have been divided at the halfway point of silent film-making: films produced between 1900 and 1915 and films produced between 1916 and 1930.
To show the rapacity with which Australian film-makers devoured source material, they have been further divided into films based on Australian-written material and films drawn from material written overseas.
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Australian Texts Onscreen to 1915
Australian film-makers did not wait long before mining their own national literature for source material.
In this list, explore Australian screen adaptations that were based on Australian source material in the first ten years or so of the Australian film industry.
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The first film adaptation of Rolf Boldrewood's novel appeared in 1907, barely a year after Australia's first major screen success, The Story of the Kelly Gang. It was by no means to be the last film adaptation of the story.
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4163808670509500787.jpgFor the Term of his Natural Life Charles MacMahon , 1908 single work film/TV
Charles MacMahon followed his adaptation of Robbery Under Arms with an adaptation of For the Term of His Natural Life, another Australian novel destined for multiple screen outings.
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6038859911665016089.jpgThe Squatter's Daughter Bert Bailey , Edmund Duggan , 1910 single work film/TV
Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan's The Squatter's Daughter is an adaptation of a 1907 play called The Squatter's Daughter, or, The Land of the Wattle; the stage was to prove a rich source of material for early Australian film-makers.
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The last of these earliest adaptations is also drawn from the stage, from a 1906 play called Thunderbolt ; Or, Three Days with Thunderbolt.
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Another film to look to the stage for source material, Keane of Kalgoorlie was based on a 1908 play of the same name.
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The Cup Winner was based on a popular stage drama, performances of which sometimes used live horses on stage.
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This film was based on a novel that had been published the previous year, a novel that was, seemingly, its author's sole literary venture.
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The first film of Fergus Hume's massively successful novel, which has been adapted multiple times in the following century.
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This was a film adaptation of Nat Gould's sporting novel of the same name, a melodrama that ended at the Melbourne Cup.
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6848845988621130494.jpgCaptain Starlight : or, Gentleman of the Road Alfred Rolfe , 1911 single work film/TV
Alfred Rolfe adapted this bushranging film from an Alfred Dampier and Garnet Walch drama.
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Rather than being based directly on Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life, Alfred Rolfe drew on Thomas Walker's stage adaptation of the novel to make this film.
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575655294837911288.jpgCaptain Midnight, the Bush King W. J. Lincoln , Adam Pierre , 1911 single work film/TV
W.J. Lincoln adapted this film from his own play of the same name.
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This film was based on an Australian novel of (almost) the same name: for some reason, the novel uses the plural Gamblers' Gold, where the film prefers the singular form.
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The Wreck of the Dunbar began as yet another Alfred Dampier play. Dampier's inspiration was the real-life wrecking of the Dunbar at the entrance to Sydney Harbour in 1857, when all but one person on board perished.
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This film was adapted from a play called Coo-ee; Or, Wild Days in the Bush.
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This may well have been the first Australian film to be based on a poem—in this case, the work of Adam Lindsay Gordon.
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Fast on the heels of Adam Lindsay Gordon's screen debut came this Raymond Longford adaptation of a Henry Lawson poem.
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This was the second of Longford's films to be based on a Henry Lawson poem, this one about a dashing bushranger who courts disaster by dancing with his girl at a bush dance.
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With The Sunny South, Australian film-makers turned back to the nineteenth-century Australian stage for source material.
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Another Adam Lindsay Gordon poem is adapted to the screen.
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Overseas Texts Onscreen to 1915
The desire to film their own national literature didn't mean that Australian film-makers were going to neglect the possibility of overseas source material.
In this list, explore Australian screen adaptations based on material published outside Australia in the first ten years or so of the Australian film industry.
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This film was based on a novel by Manx author Hall Caine, whose novels were popular source material on stages and screens beyond Australia.
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This film was based on the massively popular melodrama by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, which premiered in New York in 1860, and was first performed in Australia in 1868.
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The work on which this film is based was set in Australia, but written by English novelist Charles Reade.
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While technically based more directly on a play written for an Australian theatrical troupe, the ultimate source is a short story by American writer Bret Harte.
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This film takes as its source material a novel by English novelist Frederick John Fargus, written under the pseudonym 'Hugh Conway'.
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An adaptation of The Polish Jew, the guilt-driven melodrama by writing partnership Erckmann-Chatrian.
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Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyell had starred on stage in this American melodrama the year before they brought it to the screen.
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The drama on which this film was based, written by Mrs Morton Powell, was said by contemporary newspapers to have been imported from London.
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Another adaptation of a Dion Boucicault melodrama, this one explored racial politics in a pre-Civil War Louisiana.
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The melodrama on which this film was based premiered in Manchester in 1888.
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The original play, which involved the seduction of an innocent clergyman by a woman who has already murdered her first husband, premiered in Leeds in 1909.
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Dion Boucicault made a third appearance on Australian film screens with this adaptation.
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King of the Coiners began life as an English melodrama called Under Remand.
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This film looked particularly far back for its source material: Washington Irving's short story was originally published in 1819.
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The source of this film was a Ruritanian romance, which had toured extensively around Australia some years previously.
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1007742625178596278.jpgThe Silence of Dean Maitland E. Lewis Scott , Raymond Longford , 1914 single work film/TV
The Silence of Dean Maitland, first published in London in 1886, was popular with Australian audiences; there was a late nineteenth-century stage play, followed by this silent film, and then a talkie version in the 1930s.
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The Irish melodrama on which this film was based was first staged in the UK in 1899. In c.1913, it toured Australia with an Irish leading man, who also starred in this film version.
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Australian Texts Onscreen after 1915
If anything, the Australian film industry's fascination with adapting Australian texts only increased after 1915.
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This was an early adaptation of Katharine Susannah Prichard's novel (adapted again in ten years' time), which had only been published the previous year—perhaps the fastest turnaround to date from Australian novel to Australian film?
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Another adaptation of an Arthur Wright novel, whose Gamblers' Gold had already made it to the screen.
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The film was adapted from an Australian novel—or so a Supreme Court ruling determined, after the distributor failed to originally acknowledge the film's source. The unfortunate distributor was also sued by the makers of The Monk and the Woman, also released in 1917 and also an adaptation (of a different text).
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This film was based on a comic play about that staple of early Australian literature: the back-blocks family come to the city.
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8446372745420830197.jpgThe Sentimental Bloke Raymond Longford , Lottie Lyell , 1919 single work film/TV
The first of two major film adaptations of C. J. Dennis's The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. (The full version of this film is available to watch via our exhibition on early Australian films.)
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Unfortunately, both this film and the Australian novel on which it was based are equally obscure.
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Raymond Longford followed up the success of his Sentimental Bloke by adapting another iconic Australian work.
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And then for good measure Longford adapted the Songs of the Sentimental Bloke's sequel, too.
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Robbery Under Arms might not be the single-most adapted Australian novel, but it has to be one of the front-runners for the title. (This film is also available to watch via our exhibition on early Australian films.)
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6203258152771459736.jpgThe Breaking of the Drought Jack North , Franklyn Barrett , 1920 single work film/TV
Director Franklyn Barrett used actual footage of drought-stricken farmlands when he filmed what was, by that time, quite an old-fashioned melodrama.
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When the Billy Boils continues Henry Lawson's popularity on Australian screens.
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Perhaps it's a little disappointing that Beaumont Smith didn't like the title of his inspiration, the short story 'A Stripe for Trooper Casey'.
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7224150644565090468.jpgThe Blue Mountains Mystery Raymond Longford , Lottie Lyell , 1921 single work film/TV
The novel on which this film was based came out only two years before the film was released.
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Theatrical entrepreneur Kate Howarde adapted her own successful stage play for this film.
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Arthur Wright's sporting novels were always popular on the screen.
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What could more Australian than a recalcitrant dog and a game of cricket?
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Henry Lawson's short story wasn't adapted to the screen again for another sixty years.
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Between the 1911 adaptation of Fergus Hume's novel and this one, a version had also been made in the UK (in 1915).
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A less common entry in the Australian film industry's sub-genre of 'films based on poems'.
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Louise Lovely adapted Marie Bjelke-Petersen's novel to demonstrate that the Australian film industry could make films as sumptuous as any that came out of Hollywood.
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E.V. Timms adapted his own novel to the screen in Hills of Hate.
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The second film adaptation of Katharine Susannah Prichard's novel.
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Charles Chauvel's film was based on a novel by the extraordinarily prolific Mabel Forrest.
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dawnnaturallifecast_CqIb.jpgFor the Term of His Natural Life Norman Dawn , 1927 single work film/TV
Surprisingly, this is only the second adaptation of Marcus Clarke's novel—and also the only one in which Clarke's daughter played a role.
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Steele Rudd's novel was still fresh on bookstalls when this adaptation appeared.
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Beatrice Grimshaw's Conn of the Coral Seas supplied the inspiration for this film.
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The second of E.V. Timms's own adaptations of his novels to the screen.
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Overseas Texts Onscreen after 1915
Adaptations of overseas material were less popular in the second half of the 1910s, and fell steeply away in the 1920s, while adaptations of Australian-written works boomed.
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Advertised as an Australian mining drama, but by all accounts based on an American play.
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This American play was also filmed twice in the United States, once in 1916 and once in 1922.
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3346342702749286069.jpgGet-Rich-Quick Wallingford W. J. Lincoln , Fred Niblo , 1916 single work film/TV
This film brought a fictional American con-man to the Australian screen.
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The primary role in this film was taken by the American actress Muriel Starr, who had originated the role in the US, and played it in a touring performance in Melbourne.
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This 1916 Australian film is actually the earliest film version anywhere in the world of a work that would go on to be adapted a further eight times.
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The play on which this film was based premiered in London in 1912.
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F. Brooke Warren's supernatural detective drama attracted multiple adaptations, but only one was made in Australia.
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The melodrama on which this film was based (which was wildly popular in Australia) was also burlesqued on-stage as Struck ('Castor') Oil.
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It was perhaps inevitable that Ellen Wood's melodrama would make it to the Australian screen.
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Painted Daughters was a complex engagement with Edwardian musical comedy Floradora.
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You might be interested in...
- Australians and Adaptations
- Adaptations on Australian Screens: A Brief Introduction
- Adaptations on the Australian Screen in the Silent Era, 1900-1929
- Australian Writers Adapted Internationally
- Adaptations on Television
- Data Visualisation: Adaptations from 2010-2019
- The Frequently Adapted
- Acknowledgements
- Australians and Adaptations
- Adaptations on Australian Screens: A Brief Introduction
- Adaptations on the Australian Screen in the Silent Era, 1900-1929
- Australian Writers Adapted Internationally
- Adaptations on Television
- Data Visualisation: Adaptations from 2010-2019
- The Frequently Adapted
- Acknowledgements