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“Me patent leathers nearly brought the tears,
Me stand-up collar sorin’ orf me ears”
This device, of course, exploited the imaginative capacity of silent films: everyone in the
audience responded to the written word by creating the characters’ voices in their
heads. Outside Australia, though, the device created its own language barrier. So when
the film was prepared for American release, the titles were re-written in American slang!
The main title became The Sentimental Bloke: The story of a tough guy and Dennis’s
verse was recast somewhat. His description of the wedding breakfast:

“An’ then we ‘as a beano up at Mar’s
A slap-up feed, wiv wine an’ two big geese”
becomes
“Then comes the feast at Mar’s: Aunt, uncle, niece,
Done wonders with the wine an’ two big geese”
With the passing of the silent era, Longford’s career rapidly declined (he finished his
days as a tally clerk on the Sydney waterfront) and his films slipped from sight. Most
were lost: a handful have surfaced in incomplete or fragmentary form. The Bloke is the
only one to survive more or less intact.

In 1952 a nitrate fire atop a building in downtown Melbourne saw the destruction of the
film library of the former Government film production unit, the Cinema Branch of the
Department of Commerce. A maker of promotional shorts and documentaries, it had
effectively closed in the late 1930s. Its head, Lyn T. Maplestone, was one of the earliest
advocates of film preservation, and it appears the Unit took some steps to salt away
significant films, though which ones is unlikely now ever to be known. Miraculously, two
boxes of film survived the fire: they were sent to the Film Division of the Commonwealth
National Library in Canberra, and an examination of their contents yielded a complete
nitrate release print of The Sentimental Bloke.

The head of the Division, Larry Lake, was quick to recognise the film’s quality, and in
1954 it was sent to a Sydney laboratory for duplication. A junior technician at the lab
named Anthony Buckley was given the task of remaking all the splices in the tinted
print. Intrigued, he kept all of the two-frame trims: in later years, he would play a large
role in re-awakening interest in Australia’s film history, in the development of the
National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) and – eventually – become a major producer
in his own right. (He would eventually donate the trims to the Archive and thus provide a
record of the original tints and tones.)
16mm prints derived from the Library’s acetate negative now began to circulate to film
societies and festivals and the Bloke, and Longford himself, were re-discovered.
Longford has left a poignant record of his feelings in viewing the film again after so
many years: by then, everyone else involved in its production was dead and the
experience was bittersweet.
Fast forward to 1973. As a young film archivist, I undertook a study tour of overseas
archives which eventually led me to George Eastman House, Rochester, USA, and its
legendary film curator, James Card. I had heard rumours that George Eastman House
had a nitrate copy of The Sentimental Bloke and I wanted to check this out, so I asked
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