The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) FULL MOVIE

 

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The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) 
Director: Charles Tait

Story: Based on the real-life exploits of the bushranger Ned Kelly and his outlaw gang, likely influenced by Arnold Denham's popular stage play The Kelly Gang.
Screenplay: Charles Tait, John Tait, and Frank Tait

Cast: Frank Mills (Ned Kelly) / John Forde (Dan Kelly) / Elizabeth Tait (Kate Kelly stunt double) / Jack Ennis (Steve Hart) / Will Coyne (Joe Byrne) / John Tait / Frank Tait / Bella Cola / Vera Linden

Because The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) is a largely lost silent film from the infancy of cinema, there is no definitive, formal credit scroll like we see in modern movies. Most of the actors were uncredited members of director Charles Tait's family, local theatrical performers, or crew members pulling double duty.

According to historical research compiled by organizations like the Australian National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), only two actors have been absolute, 100% positively identified on celluloid. However, surviving production notes, family records, and film historians have pieced together the rest of the recognized players.

The complete ensemble cast and suspected performers for the 1906 film includes:

Positively Identified Cast

• John Forde as Dan Kelly

• Elizabeth Tait (wife of producer John Tait) as the stunt double for Kate Kelly in riding scenes

Traditionally Credited Core Cast

• Frank Mills as Ned Kelly (Note: Some early historical accounts alternatively suggest stage actor Godfrey Cass may have played or shared the role, though most modern consensus leans heavily toward Mills or attributes Cass's heavy involvement to the later 1923 production).

• Jack Ennis as Steve Hart

• Will Coyne as Joe Byrne

• Elizabeth Veitch as Kate Kelly (acting scenes)

• John Tait as Schoolmaster Thomas Curnow (the man who alerted the train)

Additional Character & Ensemble Cast

• Nicholas Brierley as an outlaw / gang sympathizer

• Norman Campbell as a member of the police force / outlaw extra

• Sam Crewes as a police trooper (also served as the film's assistant director)

• Mr. Marshall as a local bushman / trooper

• Mr. McKenzie as a local settler / trooper

• Ollie Wilson as an extra / townsperson

• Bella Cola as a townsperson / supporter

• Vera Linden as a townsperson / supporter

Tait Family Members (Appearing as Extras & Citizens)

Director Charles Tait famously used his extensive family network to fill out crowds and background roles cheaply:

• Frank Tait

• E.J. (Edward) Tait

• Harriet Tait

• Ivan Tait

• Charles Tait (the director himself briefly stepped into background frames)

Behind-the-Scenes Cammeo

• C.S. Marsdesh – Famously credited in production lore not as a traditional actor, but as "the man who let off the smoke bombs at the right moment" during the iconic, chaotic burning of the Glenrowan Inn climax.

Release Date: December 26, 1906
Country of Origin: Australia

The rise and violent downfall of Australia’s notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang are captured in this groundbreaking silent production, famously recognized as the world's first feature-length narrative film.

A dramatic silent film depicting the lives and crimes of the infamous Kelly Gang. The story begins with local police discussing an arrest warrant for Dan Kelly, which escalates when a trooper makes unwanted advances toward Ned’s sister, Kate Kelly. In defense of his sister's honor, Ned Kelly shoots the police trooper in the wrist, forcing the gang to flee into the rugged Australian bush. Pursued by the law, the outlaws ambush a police camp at Stringybark Creek, ruthlessly killing three troopers. The gang then launches a series of bold criminal operations, including the armed stick-ups of Younghusband’s homestead and the Euroa Bank. Traitors are dealt with harshly, culminating in the gang tracking down and executing the police informant Aaron Sherritt.

As the law closes in, the gang attempts to derail a police train before making their final stand at the Glenrowan Inn. Surrounded by heavily armed troopers, the hotel is set on fire. Inside, gang members Dan Kelly and Steve Hart shoot each other in a suicide pact rather than face capture, while Joe Byrne is fatally gunned down. Covered in his iconic, homemade iron plate armor, Ned Kelly emerges from the burning building. He staggers directly toward the police line, firing his pistols in a desperate, blazing shootout. He is eventually shot in the legs, collapsing to the ground as he begs the troopers to spare his life, marking the violent collapse of Australia's most legendary outlaw empire.

An Australian silent crime biograph film called The Story of the Kelly Gang was made in 1906. The life and criminal exploits of bushranger Ned Kelly are shown in the movie. It is universally celebrated as a holy grail of film preservation, with only about 15 to 18 minutes of its original hour-long footage surviving today after being painstakingly restored from fragments discovered in the 1970s and 1980s.

The 1906 continuous narrative film The Story of the Kelly Gang is a monumental landmark in cinema history, credited with several global "firsts" that fundamentally transformed the medium of motion pictures.

First Feature-Length Narrative Film: Running between 60 to 70 minutes across six reels of film (roughly 4,000 feet of celluloid), it shattered the existing standard of short, single-reel films to become the first multi-reel, full-length narrative feature film produced anywhere in the world.

First Cinematic Use of Colored Tinting for Narrative Intensity: To heighten the theatrical drama and emotional turmoil of the climax, filmmakers intentionally tinted the celluloid frames bright red during the scene where the police set fire to the Glenrowan Inn.

First Instance of Statewide Film Censorship: Because the film portrayed the outlaws as gallant, anti-establishment heroes and the police as corrupt villains, the Victorian and New South Wales governments banned the movie in several regions, fearing it would incite crime. This marked the very first time a government banned a film due to its political and social themes.

First Use of Advanced Kinetic Camera Perspective: Breaking away from the rigid, flat "stage-play" angles of early cinema, the director utilized a sophisticated, deep-focus spatial perspective during the climax, forcing the actor playing Ned Kelly to walk aggressively forward directly into the lens of the camera with guns blazing to immerse the audience in the action.

First Global Multimedia Roadshow: To compensate for the lack of written intertitles, the movie pioneered a comprehensive multimedia presentation layout, touring internationally across New Zealand and Great Britain accompanied by a live on-stage lecturer, backstage voice actors, and young boys hired to create synchronized sound effects like hoofbeats and gunfire.

First Film Registered on the UNESCO Memory of the World: Recognizing its unparalleled historical and cultural weight as the structural foundation of both the Australian film industry and the global feature-length format, the surviving fragments of the movie were officially inscribed onto the UNESCO International Register in 2007.