Film Pioneer
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
One of my greatest delights coming to Wesley Mission at the end of the 1970’s was to realise we had a wonderful hospital called Waddell which had several good psychiatrists. I had completed my work in psychology, had been involved in counselling for many years and the opportunity of working with a couple of good psychiatrists was an opportunity too good to be missed. In particular I responded to the remarkable work of Dr Bruce Peterson. Dr Bruce Peterson had been the principal medical officer of the hospital for more than 20 years. He was one of the most gracious Christian men I had ever met and had used his skills in writing a number of books and publications from a Christian perspective to help many people with emotional, mental and martial problems. His book for the family life movement o marriage and divorce for the Christian is a standard work. His encouragement has always greatly blessed me.
We had another couple of psychiatrists at the same time, both of whom were to cause me a great deal of problems even though we had great personal relationships. Their problem was the personal relationships they had improperly developed with other people. The result was that over the period of a few years both of these other psychiatrists eventually lost their accreditation and standing as psychiatrists and doctors. That was a tumultuous time with each of them, as I liked both men in particular but had severe reservations about the service they were giving.
A lot of this came to head during 1985 and 1986. I had realised that Waddell House, as it was known, was too inadequate a structure for the work I wanted to see develop, and so spent a lot of time with my senior managers in planning Wesley Hospital—a new private hospital which would be built on the site and incorporating the old Waddell House. This would be a multi million-dollar commitment to the equality care and excellence in service to the community. We would build a new hospital which would incorporate 32 bedrooms with ensuites and telephone facilities, with two acute care wards, modern nursing facilities and equipment, a very large and spacious active facilities and equipment, a very large and spacious active recreation building with an adjacent outdoor games area and tennis court, a number of patient lounges and groups therapy areas, facilities for visitors, staff and several suites for visiting medical officials. We would subsequently purchase half a dozen more buildings around this site to build what is one of the largest and most significant private hospitals in psychiatric care in the country. The problem was that we had no money.
This was really a huge development and I needed to raise money in what was going to prove to be a very difficult fundraising exercise. Two of our doctors helped us. Dr and Mrs Bruce Stephen gave us a very generous gift that allowed us to furnish the spacious entrance foyer. Dr and Mrs Bruce Peterson gave us a magnificent gift that allowed us to build a chapel in the hospital grounds. This was a wonderful new facility and has been used every week since, not only for Sunday service for patients and staff, but a centre where the chaplain is able to conduct midweek service and activities. It also serves as a quiet place where patients who want to pray, reflect or mediate can come aside from the busy hospital life and find wholeness of body, mind and spirit.
For some years we had a donor to Wesley hospital who although not a patient herself, had heard of some miraculous recoveries of patients and was determined to help them. She was Todds Barrett, a very generous and successful Australian businesswoman. Later she was to be honoured by the Queen with the award of the Medal of the Order of Australia. Todds Barrett took over a personal interest in the hospital as a benefactress and started to provide funds for many new developments in the life of the hospital. She also made provision under her will for a substantial estate to be made available to cover the cost of the new hospital development upon her decease. The only proviso would be that the new hospital would be called the Mabel and Franklyn Barrett wing.
It was then I became aware of the remarkable work of Walter Franklyn Brown Barrett.
Today if you are to take the lift to the very top floor of Wesley Hospital in Ashfield, you would get out and walk through a most remarkable gallery in tribute to one of Australia’s pioneer cinematographers. As early as 1896 Franlyn Barrett was cranking the handle of an elementary movie camera making Australia’s first movies.
Todds Barrett showed me much of the memorabilia of her father.
Among the most prized possessions of Walter Franklyn Barrett was a small metal disk, which if dropped, had a sound not unlike that of dud penny. But to Franklyn Barrett, that piece of tin was real gold. Because on it were inscribed the words “Alley Sloper’s Half Holiday 1901”. That disk was the equivalent of the Australian flim industry’s “Oscar”. It was given for the best film produced in Australia for 1901. Walter Barrett, as he was known within the industry, was responsible for producing more than 25 features films including films such as “The Mutiny on the Bounty”, “The Pioneer”, “The Girl of the Bush”, “Monk and the Woman”. Franklyn Barrett was born in England. He started out marking movies for the French company Pathe-Frere. He was a newsreel camera and back in 1986, he moved constantly about Australia and New Zealand filming national events. It was during this period that he was struck by a comic book hero known as “Ally Sloper”, and that led to him marking the film “Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday” which turned into a rib ticking comedy for which he won the Australian equivalent of the Oscars for 1901 as the best film produced in this nation. Franklyn Barrett loved globetrotting and his adventures would fill a Hollywood film on the widest of wide screens. He travelled to almost every country in the world, lugging his camera and tripod through jungles, across deserts and upstream in dugout canoes. On one occasion he nearly died during a hurricane in Samoa, and on another occasion was running for his life only a few feet ahead of white-hot lava when a volcano he was filming suddenly erupted. Armed with only this camera and tripod, he faced a ferocious lion in Africa. In London during World War One he filmed the air raids and got as close to the bombs dropping from Zeppelins as was possible.
He was in New York on one occasion preparing to take off for Paris when he received a cable asking him to go back to Australia. When he protested his boss said, “Barrett, you have the reputation for travelling to the end of the world at an hour’s notice, now don’t let us down.” He caught the next ship back to Australia and the next filming assignment.
In 1904 he made the first complete film of the Melbourne Cup, the first man to finish the race from start to finish. “They told me I could never do it so I just went out an did it. Our slogan in those days was “We don’t have much money but we see stacks of country and we have plenty of fun.”
From 1901 Franklyn Barrett set out to put the Australian film industry on the map. Of course Hollywood protested strongly and tried to undercut the Australian film industry.
Franklyn Barrett continued to produce Australian films on a budget of only 1,000 pounds. “We never knew where the money was coming from, but it always seemed to turn up” he said. Reading Graham Shirley and Brain Adams book “Australian Cinema—the First 80 Years’ I realised that most of Franklyn Barrett’s work in those pioneer days would be accomplished within two or three weeks. He was known among film producers as a man in love with the Australian bush.
However in 1916 he made the famous film “Mutiny on the Bounty” on an old sailing training ship “Tingara”.
There were many famous people in the early Australian film industry who were made stars because of his particular work. Probably one of the best known was Snowy Baker who went on to became famous in Hollywood.
Franklyn Barrett was an all-Australian film producer. He said, “We were for Australian first, last and always. We decided if it was not possible to make interesting pictures about our own country, we would then give up the ghost.”
One of his best films was “The Girl of the Bush” which one paper reviewed in 1921 as “She might not be classical beauty, but she is still good to look at”. The story was about a young girl who became mistress of an outback farm station where she fell in love with an unscrupulous two-up fiend while her real love was a steady young engineer. You can imagine how the story went on.
Mr. Barrett brought to Australia for his filming at a time when people were in love with the wild west of America, some real red Indians. They were of the Navaho and Hopi tribes. He filmed here “The vanishing American”, a story about the American Red Indians. I would guess however, they looked rather strange dashing around in their war dances beneath the Australian eucalypts. However the Red Indians thought of him so much they made him a blood brother at a peace pipe smoking ceremony.
Franklyn Barrett was a remarkable man, able to speak English, French and Italian. By the late 1920’s the Australian film industry fell in a hole and Franklyn Barrett joined Hoyt’s Theatres in 1927, close to the start to the Depression as a theatre manager and after that became manager of many famous Hoyt’s theatres, particularly in areas around Neutral Bay, Mosman, Arncliffe, Clovelly and Woollahra.
In Wesley Centre’s entrance there is a long photograph of one of his best-known films. In fact, some say it was his best flim. The film was known as “Know Thy child” and according to the photograph across the front of the Lyceum Theatre that Wesley Mission owned and where his films were screened, there is as message that says “The Governor urges every parent to see this film.” This film was made in 1921 and it concerned the issues that people in those days refused to consider publicly. The film concerns an abandoned mother who had no opportunity to escape to the bush where many single mothers went. There was no rescuer who came to her aid with lots of money in an angelic form. Instead this woman worked in the slums at a time when other women wouldn’t allow their own children to play with her illegitimate daughter Sadie. Strangely enough, a charity worker and socialite befriended Sadie. Later on the now grown up daughter is employed by the socialite’s husband who eventually seduces and propositions her. At this point the story reveals that the man who is now propositioning her, the husband of the charity worker, is in fact her father who ruined her mother. ”Know Thy Child” was praised on its release for its unblinkered handling of the issues of illegitimacy and incest. It received huge popular support and became a best selling film. Of course, most Australians at that time wanted to see stories of the Australian bush and successful characters who went out into the bush and there in the bush carved out a career for themselves. But Franklyn Barrett while he loved the bush, felt that “Know Thy Child” was a realistic picture of social life among the poor in the cities of Australia. He wanted to make it clear that Australia wasn’t just bush but included the poor, the slums and the city—the very people for whom Wesley Mission especially cares.
Franklyn Barrett made a lasting and significant contribution to the Australian film industry. He died at the age of 91 in July 1964 and through his daughter Todds Barrett, our Wesley Hospital has an entire section of the third floor covered with memorabilia, photographs and stills from all of his work.
This was made possible by his daughter Todds who was a remarkable businesswoman in her own right. Todds reclaimed much of the swampy ground in Botany, developed a heavy machinery business, a sand extracting business and a municipal tip at a time when women could never be considered to work in those particular industries. She is a remarkable woman whose life story I will mention to you on another occasion. When we opened the new Wesley Hospital, opened by the Premier of NSW, the Honourable Barry Unsworth, in 1987 we dedicated the new hospital to the memory of Mabel and Franklyn Barrett and for the sake of many of our patients, there is upstairs on the third floor a delightful centre of memorabilia to the Australian film industry. This has a very therapeutic value for those patients who, while having a time of rest between treatment, come and stare at the photographs, read the stories and consider life in Australia 100 years ago as recorded by Franklyn Barrett.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.