Frank Gardiner, the King of the Road

Plot

The movie consists of 25 scenes. Frank Gardiner, real name Frank Christie (John Gavin), is a Goulburn boy accused of theft by his father, and ordered to quit. He meets his future wife and starts bushranging. His sweetheart's father throws her into the sea but Gardiner saves her. After several adventures he winds up in gaol, where he has been sentenced to serve 32 years' hard labor. After 10 years, however, he is released and he moves to America.

Cast

Production

During the shooting of a scene where troopers were chasing after Gardiner, a horse collapsed and damaged its knee. In another scene which apparently made the final cut, Gardiner fires a pistol point blank in a trooper's face, and the latter was burnt and blackened with the powder.

Reception

One critic thought that:

The best points about it is Gardiner's rescue of Annie Brown from drowning, the delivery from a convict's assault of the gaol governor's little daughter, and the finale where the ex-bushranger, exiled to America, at length (after a bitter goal experience) realizes the fact that "Honesty is the best Policy," which he seeks to inculcate apparently into his daughter and his daughter's sweetheart. That it is a thrilling continuation of desperate scenes that should never have occurred in Australia goes without saying, but it has the extremely bad tendency of holding up to the juvenile portion of the audience (who applauded most vociferously whenever law and order was trampled upon) an utter contempt for one of the most useful, respectable and reputable body of men in the Government service- the police.