Ginger Meggs (1982) – Nostalgia Central

This live-action adaptation of Australia’s most iconic (and longest-running) comic strip chronicles the episodic misadventures of its titular character – a mischievous but good-hearted carrot-topped schoolboy and local “larrikin”.

Ginger (Paul Daniel) divides his time between trying to win the heart of his prissy and pert classmate, Minnie Peters (Shelley Armsworth), outsmarting his wealthy romantic rival, Eddie Coogan (Daniel Cumerford), evading the wrath of the terrifying neighbourhood bully, Tiger Kelly (Drew Forsythe), and dodging his strict schoolmaster, Mr Floggswell (Ross Higgins), all while trying to squeeze in some quality time for fishing.

The plot is episodic and wandering, involving a missing monkey, a runaway horse, jewel thieves and a circus.

Garry (Norman Gunston) McDonald plays Ginger’s long-suffering father with an impressive degree of earnest, old-fashioned, I’ll-strap-you-son concern, but the script fails to realise the tremendous comic possibilities of McDonald in this role.

The movie is set in a highly stylised small Australian town in the 1940s (location filming took place in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, around the historic towns of Bowral and Mittagong). where little girls wear spotless frocks, ribbons. and patent leather shoes, while ruffian freckled boys meet their school sweethearts at a comic-strip milk-bar run by an Italian with a tomato accent and a black moustache.

Like the old comics from which it draws its inspiration, the film is heavily visual, gaudy with costumes, with fat mums in polka-dots and bullies in baggy suits.

Ginger Meggs did not perform well at the domestic box office, failing to recoup the AUD$1.3 million budget.

Most of the child actors in the film (many of them locally cast) did not subsequently pursue theatrical careers.

Daniel Cumerford (who played Eddie Coogan) was tragically killed in 1987, aged just 19, when he was struck by a train while trying to cross railway tracks at Rockdale in Sydney

Ginger Meggs
Paul Daniel
Mr John Meggs
Garry McDonald
Mrs Sarah Meggs
Coral Kelly
Dudley Meggs
Rowan Hillard
Minnie Peters
Shelley Armsworth
Benny
Mark Spain
Ocker
Adrian McLeod
Raggsy
Mark Kounnas
Darkie
Kristian Harper
Eddie Coogan
Daniel Cumerford
Joey
Darren Flynn
Sammy
David Manning
Jacky
Andrew Heard
Tiger Kelly
Drew Forsythe
Polly
Miranda Latimer
Biddie
Monique Benet
Aggie
Bernadette Hockings
Millie
Sharon Ford
Mr Floggswell
Ross Higgins
Mr Crackett
Terry Camilleri
Miss Leach
Gwen Plumb
Miss Sharp
Marie Lloyd
Cuthbert Fitzcloon
Christopher Norton
Master Wentworth
James Wingrove
Hookey
Justin Ridley
Presenter
Adam Bowen
Walter Fotheringay
Willie Fennell
Constable Brady
John Wood
Mrs Peters
Sue Collie
Mr Mullins
Howard Vernon
Mr Wentworth
John Clayton
Mr Polly
Ron Ratcliff
Mrs Polly
Lisa Peers
Joe
Bruno Baldoni
Joe’s Daughter
Kym Shaw
Captain Hook
Hugh Keays-Byrne
Mr Fox
Harold Hopkins
Mrs Fox
Eva Sitta
Alex
Scott Grayland
Alex’s Mother
Candy Raymond
The Monkey
Tony
The Dog
Mike

Director
Jonathan Dawson

Video