Another Episode of The Adventures of Gerry Gee Turns up in Private Hands
In February 2019 I received an email from a lady named Evelyn who had read the blog post on this website about the missing episodes of The Adventures of Gerry Gee:
I just thought I’d let you know that I have an episode of the show on 16mm film that goes for about 5–6 minutes. The condition of the print is okay but unfortunately it has been heavily used and there are many splices which sometimes interrupt dialogue. The title of the episode is “Gerry’s Big Show”, although I am uncertain what part. Should you ever require it for scanning, etc, please let me know as I would be happy to loan it to you, however I suppose it would be a last resort due to the splices.
Amazing how these things turn up! I accepted Evelyn’s offer and the reel of 16mm film duly arrived by mail.
On inspection the print seemed to be in good condition generally. There were a number of buckled cement splices, suggesting breakages during projection which had been poorly repaired. And there were some torn sprocket holes. Overall I thought it should scan reasonably well.
So off to Malcolm Richards at Cameraquip it went for scanning on the Golden Eye scanner. Malcolm returned the reel and 2K digital files with the following comments:
The Gerry’s Big Show reel is quite dirty and scratched and as you pointed out has quite a few torn sprockets. It also has “extra” sprocket indentations where it’s been badly run though a projector.
Malcolm had to repair a couple of damaged frames by duplicating adjacent frames — fortunately in a place where there was not much movement on screen.
The files were also digitally stabilised and processed to reduce dust marks.
The reel turned out to be Episode 2 from the story “Gerry’s Big Show”.
What’s it about?
Gerry has decided to put on a show to raise funds for the local hospital. He teams up with singer Penny Loveday.
In this episode, Penny is struck by a car while crossing the street. The driver, a Mr Williams, is most apologetic and fortunately Penny is OK. Back at Gerry’s house a few days later, Mr Williams arrives to see how Penny is recovering and learns about Gerry and Penny’s plans to put on a show. They want to construct a small theatre for their show. Mr Williams offers Gerry and Penny the use of his disused warehouse downtown. He warns the youngsters not to open the door to the cellar because it is flooded.
Before you know it, Gerry and Penny have (somehow) constructed a stage and proscenium with curtains and are sitting in a row of seats watching some dancers rehearse on the stage. (N.B. The seats look just like the ones in the GTV9 studio and the dancing girls look like members of the ballet that appear on The Tarax Show). Penny decides to stay back after the rehearsal to practise her song “On the Bumpty Road to Love”. A strange noise interrupts her playing and she goes down to the cellar to investigate. At the bottom of the stairs she is grabbed by two men. Cliffhanger ending. We’ll have to wait for the next episode to find out what happens!
Here are a few screenshots from Episode 2 of Gerry’s Big Show:
