Cirrus@Austlit

1. Roy Rene's one and only feature film, Strike Me Lucky, was a box-office disappointment (the only one of Ken G. Hall's films to not return a profit). Originally produced under the working title 'Swastikas for Luck', the plot entailed a complex weaving of situations that provided too little in the way of dramatic organisation. Rene, too, was disappointing, being unable to transfer his trademark onstage improvisation 'Mo' persona to the more sterile surroundings of a film script and studio production.

2. In 2006, while researching Rene's life for a forthcoming play and a biography, Sydney actor/director/playwright Jon Fabian discovered missing scenes from the film. Totalling some twenty-six minutes, the footage is on vulnerable nitrate stock and will need to be transferred to a more stable medium before it can be viewed. Fabian's research, which includes interviews with former associates of director Ken G. Hall, suggests that the missing scenes comprise ad lib performances by Rene and a 'specialty act' performance by Ron Shand (famous in later years as Herb Evans in the televison soap Number 96). For further details see 'Lucky Strike' : Strike Me Lucky! Mo's Making History'.

3. Further reference: Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper. Australian Film 1900-1977, A Guide to Feature Film Production (1980), pp. 221-223.