Dan Morgan (1911)

Curiosità

Dan Morgan is a 1911 Australian film from Cosens Spencer about the bushranger Daniel Morgan. It was said to be starring "Alfred Rolfe and company". Rolfe directed three movies for Spencer, all starring himself and his wife Lily Dampier so there is a chance he may have directed this one and that it starred his wife. A prospectus for the Australian Photo Play Company said he directed it. It is considered a lost film.

Production

Spencer had previously made several popular films about bushrangers, The Life and Adventures of John Vane, the Notorious Australian Bushranger, Captain Midnight, the Bush King and Captain Starlight. Unlike those, it appears Dan Morgan was written originally for the screen and not adapted from a play or novel.

Dan Morgan had appeared as a character in films based on plays such as Moonlite and The Squatter's Daughter.

Production took place at a time when there were rising fears about the negative influence of bushranger films on the general public. In April 1911 two teenage boys were sentenced to death for killing a woman and her daughter - in court one of them said they said been reading about Dan Morgan a week before the crime.

Advertising tried to counterbalance this, claiming:

In the past some films descriptive of bushranging may have been inclined to create a false impression in the minds of young Australia. Mr Spencer has produced at great expense the true story of Dan Morgan, the notorious Australian outlaw, making no attempt to glorify his doings or palliate the heinousness of his crime, but presenting the subject in such a way as will point a strong moral lesson, and show the ultimate fate of all evil-doers, for t…

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