The Hayseeds

Clip 2: ‘What makes Australians tough’

Taken from the feature The Hayseeds (1933)

Original title classification G – this clip chosen to be G

Curator’s clip description

Mary Townleigh (Shirley Dale) has been found after being briefly lost in the bush. The Hayseeds open their home, and Dad Hayseed (Cecil Kellaway) suggests they stay until she is better. Mr Townleigh (Kenneth Brampton) doesn’t wish to be any trouble, which makes Dad laugh. He explains what he knows about trouble.

Curator’s notes

Kellaway makes the best of Beau Smith’s stirring dialogue – which was calculated to flatter the audience. Kellaway’s country drawl is perfectly pitched to contrast with Brampton’s very English accent (he’s playing a wealthy Sydney lawyer), but he uses interruption of Townleigh’s dialogue to suggest the quick workings of Dad Hayseed’s mind. The way he says ‘precisely’ is a gentle take-off of Mr Townleigh’s own use of the word in an earlier scene. Dad may be a Hayseed but he’s no dummy.

Paul Byrnes, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows a film dialogue between Dad Hayseed (Cecil Kellaway) and Sydney lawyer Mr Townleigh (Kenneth Brampton) about ‘trouble’ and its effect on the Australian character. The clip opens with Mary Townleigh being cared for by the Hayseed family, then cuts to the porch where Dad Hayseed takes Mr Townleigh’s wish not to cause any trouble as a springboard to itemise his recent troubles and to ponder how ‘trouble’ has made Australians tough, comparing them to an ironbark tree, before concluding that Australians have a hard spirit but a soft heart.

Educational value points

The ‘Dad and Dave’ variety of Australian imaginative texts includes written sketches, stories, plays, radio serials, feature movies, stage productions and television programs. ‘Dad and Dave’ dates back to a sketch by Steele Rudd that appeared in the Bulletin on 14 December 1895. The distinctive feature characterising this scene as part of the ‘Dad and Dave’ type of comedies is the opinionated ‘Dad’ character, a selector who is a lot cleverer than he first appears.

The Selection Acts of New South Wales and Victoria broke up the very large land holdings of the squatters after the middle of the 19th century and made land available to free selectors. Selectors usually had small farms so they did not run sheep or cattle. Many of the selectors were returned soldiers who faced problems such as lack of experience and capital, farms that were too small and land that was unproductive.

Dad Hayseed’s musings about ‘trouble’ making Australians tougher and more warm-hearted are references to the effect of the Great Depression (1929–39). At about the time The Hayseeds was shot, almost one-third of the Australian workforce was unemployed and confidence in future improvement was at rock bottom. Dad Hayseed’s message is that, like the ironbark tree, the Australian national character is defined and strengthened by such troubles.

Many of the heroines of earlier Australian films were portrayed as capable young jodhpur-clad women, at home in the bush and able to do anything a man could do, but Mary Townleigh fails to fit the mould. Despite wearing the required jodhpurs, she nonetheless gets lost in the bush. The film takes a gentle dig at the stereotype when Mrs Hayseed tells Mary, ‘You’ll be more comfortable, dear, when you’re dressed like a girl again’.

Most examples of ‘Dad and Dave’ comedies satirise people from the city and The Hayseeds is no exception. The appropriately named Mr Townleigh is presented as a caricature with his clipped British accent, tight collar and tie and pince-nez spectacles. By contrast, Dad Hayseed speaks with a slow drawl, and uses colloquial expressions.

Cecil Kellaway (1890–1973) played Dad Hayseed and the clip provides an example of his work. Kellaway was born in South Africa, performing there as a comedian. He played character roles in Australia from 1921 until 1937 when he gained a US film contract. In Hollywood he appeared in more than 75 movies and was nominated for Academy awards for his roles in The Luck of the Irish (1948) and Guess who’s Coming to Dinner (1967).

Filmmaker Frank Beaumont Smith (1885–1950) was Australia’s most commercially successful producer of the silent era, with 17 feature films made between 1917 and 1925 to his name, when he embarked on this movie. The seven films in the Hayseeds series were his biggest box office hits and all were made in the economical style that earned him the nickname ‘One-take Beau’. Smith frequently acted as producer, director, writer, editor and publicist for his films.