Charles Chauvel was born in Queensland, Australia in 1897. In 1926 he made his first feature film, "The Moth of Moonbi" . His following film, "Greenhide" starred Elsie Sylvaney, the woman who was to become Charles' wife in June 1927. In 1933 Charles travelled to Tahiti and filmed In the Wake of the Bounty , a film which launched the career of Errol Flynn. The war film 40,000 Horsemen released in 1941 proved to be a major world-wide success, breaking all box-office records in Australia. Chauvel's last two feature films, Sons of Matthew and Jedda were both largely filmed in the Australian outback. Sons of Matthew was another safari film, while Jedda was the first Australian colour film. It was ground-breaking in another way, being possibly the first Australian feature film based around Australian Aborigines. It received sound praise at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Charles died suddenly of a heart attack in 1959.
