Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters: Australia’s First Female Filmmaking Team by Mandy Sayer

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Faint mark on tail foredge. Interior and binding are still excellent.

The trailblazing McDonagh sisters were the first women in Australia to form their own film production company. Between 1926 and 1933, while in their mid-twenties, these sassy sisters produced four feature films and several documentaries.

The youngest, Paulette, was one of only five women film directors in the world. Phyllis produced, art directed, and conducted publicity. And the eldest, Isabel, under her stage name Marie Lorraine, acted superbly in all the female leads. Together, the sisters transformed Australian cinema's preoccupations with the outback and the bush and what they mocked as 'haystack movies' into a thrilling, urban modernity.

Their private lives were equally adventurous, and their suitors included a famous magician, a wealthy rubber broker, a defrocked Anglican priest, and several silent film stars.

In Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters, Mandy Sayer reveals the sisters' remarkable story, from daughters of a respected Sydney surgeon with a love of theatre and the arts, to their first feature film, Those Who Love (1926), an instant hit, and their controversial final film, Two Minutes Silence (1933). Today, their most famous feature, The Cheaters, is frequently screened at international film festivals around the world, most notably in New York and London, to rapturous reviews. (publisher blurb)