The Magic Shoes (lost Australian short film; 1935)

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NFSA 687582-3-C.jpg

Peter Finch, Claude Flemming, and Helen Hughes on the set of the film.

Status: Lost


The Magic Shoes is a 1935 Australian short film directed by Claude Flemming. The short was an adaptation of Cinderella and is notable for being actor Peter Finch's first on-screen performance. It also starred Helen Hughes, daughter of then-Prime Minister Morris Hughes.

The creators of the short were unsuccessful in finding a distributor, so it never ended up receiving a commercial release and ended up fading into obscurity. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has officially classified the film as lost, and it is listed among their most-wanted.

In 2006, a National Film and Sound Archive intern named Ellie Bennett was assigned the task of going through and sorting a briefcase full of memorabilia that had been donated by the late cameraman Mel Nichols (who was part of the production team of the film). Among the materials within the case was a roll of nitrate film containing 33 production stills from the lost short.[1][2]

Besides the aforementioned stills, no other material from the film has surfaced, and no known copies of the film are known to exist.

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