by The first Australian to win an Oscar winner was Ken Hall, a self-taught film maker who teamed with a fearless newsreal cameraman during World War II.
Ken Hall is an important figure in the early days of Australian film.
Born in Sydney in 1901, he fell in love with movies as a child. The medium was still new: invented the decade before, the first film screenings in Australia had occurred in the late 1890s (read about Australia’s first film screening, here).
Hall came from a working class background. His father was a typesetter for a local newspaper, Hall initially followed him into the same industry; when he finished high school in 1916 he found a job as a cadet reporter for the ‘Evening News’.
But his passion was cinema, and after a year he left and took a role with a local movie company, Union Theatres.
Union Theatres ran one of the country’s largest cinema chains. Hall worked in the publicity department, writing press releases, and managed the Lyceum Theatre on the side.
In 1921, still aged only 20, he was appointed national publicity officer.
In 1924 he moved to First National Pictures, an American film company that had opened a branch in Sydney. He managed publicity for the films the company imported, and also helped to edit them, to sidestep Australia’s strict censorship laws.
Many films in the 1920s and 30s were banned in Australia, the power to do so sitting with one person: the NSW state government censor (read more about films banned in Australia, here).
Hall became interested in film production, First National sponsored him on a trip to America. There he spent a year observing modern film making techniques.
Back in Australia, Hall returned to Union Theatres.
In 1931, the company founded ‘Cinesound Productions’ as a subsidiary. Based in Bondi Junction, this was a full scale film studio, designed to replicate the model used in Hollywood.
Hall was appointed General Manager, and ran the company based on his experiences in the US. Among his innovations, he oversaw the implementation of a sound-on-film recording process, that allowed audio to be added to local films for the first time.
Hall then moved into feature directing, beginning with ‘On Our Selection’ in 1932.
The film was based on a popular book series by Steele Rudd, presenting a fictionalised version of the author’s eccentric family in rural Queensland. The books had already been adapted into a successful stage show, which Hall’s movie was based on.
The film would also be a huge success.
Receiving positive reviews, it found a wide audience in both Australia and New Zealand. In its initial run it collected £46 000 at the box office, equivalent to about $8 million today, making it the highest grossing Australian film to that time.
Although the film’s success did not translate overseas; when it screened in Britain, critics found the characters to be caricatures, and the humour unsophisticated. Retitled ‘Down on the Farm’, it only screened a few times before disappearing.
But its local success immediately established Hall as one of the country’s foremost film makers.
Through the remainder of the 1930s, he kept up a prolific output, directing 14 more feature films, and several shorts. ‘On Our Selection’ would have four sequels.
The outbreak of World War II greatly reduced local film production. Union Theatres, now renamed ‘Greater Union’, decided to shutter Cinesound Productions in 1940.
Hall would work on a weekly newsreel series, called ‘Cinesound Review’. He also produced short propaganda films for the Ministry of Information, to support the war effort.
The start of the war in the Pacific found Australia a country on edge. The rapid advances of the Japanese military, and consequent retreat and surrender of British and American forces, saw the country gripped by the fear of invasion.
1942 would be a crucial year.
In February, Darwin was bombed by Japanese aircraft. In May, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour, and fired torpedos at anchored warships.
In July, Japanese troops landed in northern Papua New Guinea, then an Australian territory, and began to march south. Their objective was Port Moresby, the territory’s largest city.
If this were occupied, the Japanese would have a base directly adjacent to the Australian mainland.
Standing in their way was an Australian force at Kokoda, a tiny town on a plateau, deep in the jungle. With the solders was Australian cameraman, Damian Parer.
Like Hall, Parer had come to his future vocation as a youth.
Growing up in Melbourne, he attended St Kevins College, and joined the school’s camera club. While still a teenager, he won a statewide photography competition run by ‘The Argus’ newspaper, using the prizemoney to buy himself a professional camera.
After high school he apprenticed with Arthur Dickinson and Max Dupain, the latter one of Australia’s foremost artistic photographers. In the 1930s he worked as a freelance news photographer, and after moving to Sydney, took stills on several film productions.
He graduated from there to being a film camera operator.
At the outbreak of World War II, Parer was appointed the official movie photographer for the Australian Armed Forces. Deploying with active units, he would capture footage of the services in action, sending this back to Australia to be used in newsreels.
Embedded first with the Navy, Parer saw action in Greece and North Africa. But as the war came closer to home, the Ministry of Information moved him to the Pacific theatre.
In early 1942 he was sent to Port Moresby, and travelled on foot from there to Kokoda. This was via the famous ‘Kokoda Track’; an arduous, uphill, six day slog through the jungle, that was the only way for troops to reach the front line.
In stifling heat and humidity, and lugging a heavy 35mm camera, Parer experienced the worst of the conditions firsthand.
Fighting at Kokoda commenced in July, with the Australian 39th Battalion engaging the advancing Japanese. Heavily outnumbered, the Australian troops fought doggedly, but were forced into a slow, strategic retreat.
The soldiers were captured on film, picking their way through the jungle.
‘Parer placed himself ahead of the troops, often filming from precarious locations in order to present the steep inclines and narrowness of the track. His footage shows the physical and emotional battle of the troops in rugged and unwelcoming terrain.’
– Poppy De Souza, ‘Australian Screen’
Reinforcements would shortly arrive via the Kokoda Track, and the Australians were able to stem the advance. Fighting would continue through the rest of the year, with the Japanese eventually pushed back north, losing 3 000 casualties.
It was their first significant defeat of the war.
Back in Australia, Hall received Parer’s footage and fashioned it into a newsreel. Titled, ‘Kokoda Front Line!’ the 8 minute short was in theatres by September, while the fighting was still ongoing.
Parer provided a filmed introduction, where he highlighted the urgency of the moment: he told the audience the war was ‘right outside the door’.
Unusually for a war movie, no actual fighting was shown onscreen, and no Japanese soldiers. Parer explained via voiceover that the jungle was so thick, opposing troops could be only a few metres apart, and not see one another.
The film instead showed Australian troops preparing for battle, traversing the dramatic terrain, and stoically coping with wounds and injuries. Despite their difficult situation, they appeared in good spirits.
The short was well received, and considered to be a great boost for local moral. Greater Union submitted it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for consideration at the upcoming Academy Awards.
(You can watch the full short, here).
The Academy Awards had begun in 1929, as a means to recognise excellence in film. Based in Hollywood, they were the brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, who also saw them as a means of easy publicity.
The American film industry, and the Oscars, continued during the war. In 1943 it was decided to add an Oscar for ‘Best Documentary’.
The first award was something of a free-for-all. Twenty five films were nominated, with both features and shorts competing; the huge field produced a unique result, in a four way tie.
Many of the films nominated, and all of the winners, were about the war. ‘Kokoda Front Line!’ shared the prize with American films ‘The Battle of Midway’ and ‘Prelude to War’, and Russian film ‘The Battle of Moscow’.
As director, Ken Hall became the first Australian to win an Oscar. His short is also the only newsreel to win, in any category.
Unable to travel to the United States because of the conflict, Hall’s Oscar was shipped to him. Due to a wartime shortage of precious materials, it was not gold plated.
Instead, Hall received a temporary, ‘ersatz’ version, made out of gunmetal.
When the war ended in 1945, the Academy provided a gold plated replacement. The inscription read:
‘To Kokoda Front Line! for its effectiveness in portraying simply yet forcefully the scene of war in New Guinea and for its moving presentation of the bravery and fortitude of our Australian comrades in arms.’
Discussing the award, Hall would always highlight Parer’s contribution.
When the war ended, Greater Union decided against re-opening Cinesound Productions. The site lay dormant for a few years, before the company sold it in 1951 to a soft drink bottling company.
The location, 65 Ebley Street, is today home to a large ‘Spotlight’ outlet.
Ken Hall directed one feature film after the war: a biopic of Australian aviator Charles Kingford-Smith, which was a long term passion project. Despite the film being a commercial success, Hall failed to secure financial backing for other film projects.
In 1957, he was hired away from Greater Union by Sir Frank Packer, who placed him in charge of his flagship television station, TCN-9. Hall ran the station until his retirement in 1966.
In the 1970s he would befriend and mentor many young film makers who came up in the ‘Australian New Wave’, including George Miller, Peter Weir and Phillip Noyce.
Ken Hall died at his home in Mosman, in 1994. He donated both of his Oscars to the National Film and Sound Archive, where they remain.
After Kokoda, Damian Parer continued to film the war in the Pacific. The Oscar had raised his profile and he fielded offers from other newsreal companies; switching to Paramount Studios, he then covered American troops.
In 1943 he spent time with US forces during the Battle of Guam, in 1944 he was with US Marines as they invaded the small island nation of Palau.
Fighting for the islands was fierce. The Japanese defenders were well entrenched, and had been told to fight to the last man; the United States would lose 9 000 casualties displacing them, some of their worst losses of the war.
On September 17, Parer was filming the 7th US Marine Regiment on the island of Peleliu, when the formation was attacked by a concealed Japanese machine gun nest. Parer, standing out the front of the column and unprotected, was gunned down and killed instantly.
He was 32 years old.
His body would be buried along with the other combat casualties, at the Ambon war cemetery in Indonesia. Parer would receive a posthumus award from the American Journalists’ Association, honouring his war coverage.
