Caddie (film)

Caddie
DVD cover.
Directed by	Donald Crombie
Produced by	Anthony Buckley
Written by	Joan Long
Based on	memoir Caddie: A Sydney Barmaid
Starring	Helen Morse (Caddie) Takis Emmanuel Jack Thompson Jacki Weaver
Music by	Patrick Flynn
Cinematography	Peter James
Production company	Anthony Buckley Productions
Distributed by	Roadshow Entertainment
Release date	1 April 1976
Running time	106 minutes
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	A$400,000
Box office	A$2,847,000 (Australia)

Caddie is an Australian film directed by Donald Crombie and produced by Anthony Buckley. Released in 1976, it is representative of the Australian film renaissance which occurred during that decade. Set mainly in Sydney during the 1920s and 1930s, including the Great Depression, it portrays the life of a young middle class woman struggling to raise two children after her marriage breaks up. Based on Caddie, the Story of a Barmaid, a partly fictitious autobiography of Catherine "Caddie" Edmonds, it made Helen Morse a local star and earned Jacki Weaver and Melissa Jaffer each an Australian Film Institute Award.

In 1925 Sydney, Caddie leaves her adulterous and brutish husband and takes her two children, Ann and Terry, with her. Forced to work as a barmaid in a pub she struggles to survive. A brief affair with Ted (Jack Thompson) ends badly, but she falls in love with a Greek immigrant, Peter (Takis Emmanuel). Peter has to return to Greece to face family obligations. Caddie runs out of money and goes to work as a barmaid. Peter sends letters from Greece and Caddie has to evade police as she works for an SP bookie. Peter asks her to come to Athens but she decides to stay.

The original autobiography was published in 1953. The real-life barmaid, Catherine Edmonds, got to know Dymphna Cusack while she was writing Come in Spinner and Cusack helped the book get published.

The budget was raised from the Australian Film Development Corporation, the Australian Women's Weekly, the Nine television network, the Secretariat for International Woman's Year, and Roadshow. Shooting began in late 1975.