Come Up Smiling (1939)

Anecdotes

Come Up Smiling is a 1939 Australian comedy film starring popular American stage comedian Will Mahoney and his wife Evie Hayes. It was the only feature from Cinesound Productions not directed by Ken G. Hall.

Production

The film was developed as a star vehicle for popular comedian Will Mahoney, an American vaudevillian who toured Australia successfully in 1938. Ken G. Hall also hired Mahoney's regular co-stars, his wife Evie Hayes and manager, Bob Geraghty. Mahoney had previously made a British film Said O'Reilly to MacNab.

Hall hoped that Mahoney's appeal would help the film outside Australia:

This is the most important contract that has been signed at Cinesound as Mahoney is the highest paid star we have ever signed up. In fact, I think he's the highest paid stage artist ever to have toured Australia. It is only the improved conditions of the Australian film industry, due to recent legislation, that has made it possible for us to enlarge our production budget.

Mahoney later said, "I think I'll be a big success in this film, but don't get me wrong. It's only because I'm playing myself and I feel I know me pretty well." He described his role a "a nice little bloke trying to make something of himself." Filmink argued "the fact that Hall wanted to build a vehicle around him was indicative of Cinesound’s ambition.

In June 1939 it was announced the film would be called Come Up Smiling and would be the first film from Cinesound Productions not directed by Hall. The writer-director, William Freshman, was born in Australia but had been working in the British film industry. Freshman was hired along with his wife, scriptwriter Lydia Hayward.

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