Year 9 History - Topic 3 - Australia in the 1920’s and 1930’s

Inquiry Question
What was the contribution and significance of at least ONE Australian, ONE important event and ONE political development during the interwar period?

”Talkies” are Introduced

Before radio and television, people were kept up-to-date on current affairs by reading a newspaper, or by watching the newsreels that screened as a regular part of the cinema programming. Newsreels were screened along with film previews, cartoons and features.

Before the days of ‘talking pictures’, Australian newsreel production thrived, with Australasian Gazette, Pathe’s Animated Gazette and Paramount Gazette, plus various local and regional newsreel productions. By 1926 Australasian Gazette had reached Issue No. 820, and Paramount Gazette Issue No. 490. (King)

The advent of films with sound made the production of newsreels more expensive, leading to the demise of Australia’s smaller, independent producers. Examples of these pre-sound newsreels have been preserved at the Australian National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA).

In 1929 the US-based company Fox International Movietone News produced its first successful Australian newsreel coverage with sound. The reports included an interview with the Prime Minister of Australia, James Scullin, and coverage of the 1929 Melbourne Cup. (Reade 12)

From this point onwards, newsreels were produced in Australia almost every week until October 1975. Sound newsreels gave the Australian people ‘glimpses of world events, local news and a range of human interest stories’. (Bertrand 158)

Newsreels brought images of the nation to the screen – moving images that gave many Australians their first view of an enormous country beyond the familiar neighbourhood and home. Newsreels presented city life with its important civic and social occasions: celebrations of nationhood and the British Empire; socially significant births, deaths and marriages; and sporting spectacles featuring sun-bronzed Aussie lifesavers, footballers and tennis players. Newsreels also covered events in rural Australia, giving glimpses of the vast outback.

In learning teams choose one of the following

1) Research the role of

a)  stage, screen and wireless as entertainment in Australian society 1919 to 1939 OR

b)  newsreels, newspapers and wireless as information sources for Australians in the interwar years.

2) Design and compile an accurate pictorial source based autobiography of one “Stars of Theur Time”

Eg Roy Rene and Mo, Nellie Melba, Gladys Moncrieff, Annette Kellerman, Percy Grainger.

3) Write and produce a WMV newsreel bulletin covering ONE headline news story

“De Groot Slashes Ribbon”

“Smithy’s Old Bus Conquers Pacific”

“Phar Lap Dead”

“Bradman Bodylined”

Or

find another major Australian Story of the interwar years to report on