“Zest to the jaded movie palate”: Wallace Worsley, Scott R. Dunlap and The Romance of Runnibede

During 1927, Australian company Phillips’ Film Productions made The Romance of Runnibede. The film included scenes shot in Sydney as well as a cattle property and an Indigenous settlement to create a “healthy story” with “Australian sentiment” for global audiences. Believing that high “American standards” of filmmaking ensured international success, the company used personnel imported from Hollywood including—among others—two American directors, Scott Dunlap and Wallace Worsley, an American star, Eva Novak, and Australians who had worked in Hollywood. In this chapter Tom O’Regan’s Australian National Cinema (1990) provides the framework for analyzing the complex dynamics between Australia and Hollywood, as revealed in business papers, promotional materials and contemporary newspaper coverage, as well as evidence given to the Royal Commission into the Australian Motion Picture Industry.