My Lady of the Cave
“Rattling Tale of Adventure on the New Zealand Coast, with a Love Story that Steals into your Heart, like some Weird and Beautiful Melody.”
About My Lady of the Cave
Gordon Campbell (Bob Ramsey) is swept off the timber scow Empress and onto an island. A flashback shows a Te Kooti raid on Poverty Bay that kills the Trite family after they break a tapu. The child Beryl survives, is taken by Rau, who is left mute, and grows up alone. Gordon finds the adult Beryl (Hazel West) living in a cave, blunders into a gang of moonshiners, and gets away in a boat she gives him. He returns for her. In a shoot-out Rau is hit and, dying, hands over a box that links Beryl to the Trite family.
Cast & crew
More about My Lady of the Cave
Rudall Hayward's first feature. He adapted H. T. Gibson's serial, which ran in the New Zealand Herald from September 1921 to February 1922, and set the story in the Bay of Plenty in the 1890s. Shooting ran seven weeks from December 1921, six of them on Mayor Island. Arthur Bestic was assistant director. Cyril Morton did the titles. Hazel West's costumes came from George Court's in Auckland. The print is 35mm, 18 frames per second, black and white and tinted. The censor passed it for general exhibition on 17 February 1922.
Themes
Background
In 1922 most features on New Zealand screens were imported. Hayward, still in his early twenties, made this one at home from a newspaper serial that was still running when he shot it.
In film history
It is the first feature directed by Rudall Hayward, who went on to make the country's best-known silent and early sound features.
Making
Six of the seven shooting weeks were on Mayor Island. Hayward told The Listener in 1940 about a dangerous moment during the filming, and he later judged the story weaker than the scenery.
Reviews
The New Zealand Herald, after the Grand Theatre opening, wrote that patrons did not have to make allowances for a local picture, praised the photography, called the story wholesome, and said the New Zealand atmosphere was kept.
Audiences
The Herald reported crowds at every session on the opening day at the Grand Theatre.
Look
Ngā Taonga credits Frank Stewart, in brackets, with the photography. The New Zealand Herald wrote that the photographic effects commanded admiration at once.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles. Art titles are credited to Cyril Morton.
Preservation
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision holds the film, catalogued as F5442, for on-site viewing. Archive notes describe a 35mm print at 18 frames per second, black and white and tinted, running 71 minutes.
Notes
- It opened at the Grand Theatre on Queen Street, Auckland, on 25 February 1922.
- Ngā Taonga lists Hazel West as Beryl and Bob Ramsey as Gordon Campbell. New Zealand On Screen also refers to her as Hazel de Montalk and to him as Robert Ramsay.
- Hayward later said the photography was magnificent, the story fairly crude, and that money made in New Zealand was lost trying to release the film overseas.
- An intertitle has the clerk tell the cave woman, "I'm sorry miss to have intruded.
Scenes
- Gordon is lost overboard from the timber scow Empress.
- He finds Beryl living in the cave.
- Rau, dying after the moonshiners' shoot-out, gives him the box that names the Trite family.
Influenced by
- H. T. Gibson's New Zealand Herald serial (1921–1922)
Also available
- Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Quotes
I'm sorry miss to have intruded.
