Robbery Under Arms

Robbery Under Arms (1957)

The Outlaw Who Seared His Brand On the Land!

During the mid 1860s, brothers Dick and Jim Marston are drawn into a life of crime by their ex-convict father Ben and his friend, infamous cattlethief Captain Starlight. Making their way to Melbourne with the proceeds of a recent raid, the brothers meet and romance the Morrison sisters, Kate and Jean, whom they eventually marry; but just as they are poised to start a new life in America, Captain Starlight and his gang arrive in town, planning a raid at the local bank.

Date of release
1957-01-10
TMDB
5.2 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama, Western
Director
Jack Lee

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

Robbery Under Arms is a 1957 bushranger film directed by Jack Lee and starring Peter Finch, Ronald Lewis, Maureen Swanson and David McCallum. It is adapted by Alexander Baron, W. P. Lipscomb and Richard Mason from the 1888 novel of the same name by Thomas Alexander Browne.

Development

Director Jack Lee and producer Joseph Janni had a big hit with the Australian-themed A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Peter Finch and written by Lipscomb. Rank put Lee and Janni under contract for two years and had Finch under contract. Jack Lee later said:

I wanted to work with Finch again and I was attracted to Australia... I made a mistake choosing Robbery Under Arms, a complicated Victorian novel with masses of plots and subplots and too much moralising. However I went ahead and chose the part for Peter Finch, who complained that he was overshadowed by everyone else, and in a way he was right. Janni and I weren't happy with the script and would have liked to put it off for another year.

In May 1956 it was announced the Rank organisation would make Robbery Under Arms with Lee and Jannie with filming to begin in December. In June 1956 it was announced the lead role would be played by Peter Finch - who was just about to leave England to make The Shiralee in Australia for Ealing MGM

Filmink argued a factor in Rank agreeing to make the film was its "determination around that time to combat the threat of television by making more films overseas on location (eg Ferry to Hong Kong, Windom's Way, The Wind Cannot Read, Campbell's Kingdom, Across the Bridge, The Spanish Gardener, Seven Thunders)."

According to Vincent Ball, who had been in A Town Like Alice, Peter Finch suggested to Jack Lee that Ball and Finch play the Marsden boys but John Davis, the managing director of Rank, "insisted that contract artistes be used for the leads". Ball agreed to play a smaller role in the movie if he could go to Australia. He was away "ten or eleven weeks" on salary to say one line in Australia filming the rest of his scenes at Pinewood.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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