'The Sentimental Bloke has been a significant story in Australian cultural history, beginning as a poem, and becoming two films, a stage play, a ballet, and a musical; and there have been versions for television, gramophone and radio.' Butterss examines how the poem 'might have operated through its audience in 1915, and how Raymond Longford's 1919 silent film and Frank Thring's 1932 talkie might have worked in altered economic and cultural circumstances.'