Hollywood Imports and a Cultural Clash: How Adam's Woman's American Backers Botched an Australian Follow‑Up

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Hollywood Imports and a Cultural Clash: How Adam's Woman's American Backers Botched an Australian Follow‑Up

Adam's Woman / 1970s

Adam's Woman (released 1970) was emblematic of a late‑1960s/early‑1970s pattern in which Hollywood money attempted to graft American stars, writers and directors onto distinctly Australian stories — with predictable friction. The project began life as The Return of the Boomerang and was announced as early as November 1965 as part of a slate from Motion Pictures International, the new company formed by producers Steve Broidy and Louis F. Edelman. Over the next three years the film survived a string of announced writers and directors — Lowell Barrington, T. E. B. Clarke, Lewis Allen and others were all tied to versions of the project — before finally being shot under British director Philip Leacock from a script that changed hands (Richard Fielding is reported to have worked on it) and starring American Beau Bridges alongside Jane Merrow and veteran John Mills. Finance came from Hollywood, and the production imported key creative personnel (script, director, cinematographer and star were all non‑Australian) even while being shot entirely on location in Australia (Cambewarra, the Shoalhaven River area) and at Ajax Films studios in late 1968 and early 1969.