Charles Cozens Spencer

Who was Charles Cozens Spencer?

Charles Cozens Spencer (1874 - 1930) was a British-born film exhibitor and producer, who was a significant figure in the early years of the Australian film industry.

After working in Canadian film exhibition, he first arrived in Australia in 1905. He made a fortune exhibiting The Great Train Robbery in Australia and soon became the leading exhibitor in the country. He moved into production, establishing a permanent production unit under Ernest Higgins in 1908. Initially focused on documentary shorts and newsreels, he moved into funding dramatic feature films, starting with The Life and Adventures of John Vane, the Notorious Australian Bushranger (1910).

He was an early supported of director Raymond Longford who directed The Fatal Wedding (1911) for Spencer. The success of this film enabled him to set up a ₤10,000 studio complex in Rushcutter's Bay, Sydney, where Longford made his next couple of features.

1913 saw the formation of the "combine" of Australasian Films and Union Theatres, a merger of key Australian exhibition, distribution and production companies, including Spencer's. After the box office failure of The Shepherd of the Southern Cross (1914) he was unable to persuade the combine to invest in drama production, and stepped back his involvement in the local industry.

Spencer left Australia and returned to Canada with his wife, where he bought a ranch in British Columbia. In 1930, depressed after some financial reversals, he went on a shooting spree, killing his storeman and wounding another man, before drowning himself in a nearby lake.[4] He left behind an estate worth $300,000.