The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934 film)

The Silence of Dean Maitland is a 1934 Australian film directed by Ken G. Hall, and based on Maxwell Grays novel of the same name. It was one of the most popular Australian movies of the 1930s.

The script was based on a play adapted from a popular novel by Maxwell Gray which had previously been filmed in 1914. The rights to the play were owned by a friend of Stuart F. Doyles, Joe Lippmann. Hall and Doyle went to see a production of the play at the Rockdale Amateur Society and ended up in a fit of controllable laughter. However Hall recognised that the basic structure of the piece was solid. He arranged for the play to be adapted into a screenplay by ABC radio writer Edmund Barclay and an old friend of Halls Gayne DexterThe film was meant to be Cinesounds follow up to On Our Selection but Hall had trouble finding appropriate actors to play the leads, and so made The Squatters Daughter instead. Eventually, John Longden and Charlotte Francis, English actors touring Australia in a play, were cast. Jocelyn Howarth, who had leapt to fame in The Squatters Daughter, was given a support role. ........

Source: Wikipedia