Film Weekly year book of the Canadian motion picture industry (1951)

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covered spools, one of which worked in a groove and acted as a tightener. The spool bank was set up close behind the lamphouse, the film passing over and under the lamp. “A few weeks later we saw the en¬ tertainment in Port Hope, Ont. The films used were: Mr. Lumiere and his family eating lunch in the garden at their home in Fontainbleau; passengers landing from a steamer, ‘The Naughty Boy and the Gardener’ and several scenic and street scenes.” There seems a flaw in the story. The Lumiere brothers, Louis and Auguste of Lyons, France, first brought out a combination of camera and projector called the Cinematograph on March 22, 1895 and used it commercially for the first time in the Grand Cafe, Paris on December 28, 1895. It might be, of course, that the Toronto machines of Hill were of the type turned out by the Lumieres before the one they used in the Grand Cafe, from which the “bugs” had been ironed out and which was soon being manufactured in quantity. But until later research clears this matter up, it must be assumed that the Ottawa showing was the first in Canada. One comes regularly across the infor¬ mation that Auguste Guay and Andre Vermet, who came from Paris, showed films in a Montreal Dime Museum with a primitive Lumiere projector they had brought with them. Later they were said to have given shows for children at Sohmer Park. The date was 1888. Perhaps they used slides or one of the many wheels which showed dancing figures. In any case, the Lumieres did not have screen projection until seven years later — and they based it on an Kinetoscope brought to France by one of the Holland Brothers’ customers. Perhaps the date is wrong. |N 1897 two Americans exhibited films * of the fight in which Bob Fitzsimmons of Australia won the heavyweight box¬ ing championship from James J. Corbett of San Francisco. An empty store at the south-west corner of Richmond and Yonge Streets, Toronto was used as an auditorium during the two weeks of the Canadian National Exhibition and the public was admitted for 25 cents from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. The operators maintained a ballyhoo out¬ side. Tom Flanagan, the Toronto sports¬ man who managed both Tom Longboat, the great Canadian marathoner, and Jack Johnson, the old-time heavyweight champion, says that the film was so bad now and then that only by using the part in Corbett’s hair as a key could the fighters be identified. Yet the public was fascinated. Motion picture exhibitions began cropping up in different places in the Dominion. As yet it is difficult to de¬ termine which was the first “theatre.” In 1897 James McConnahee opened a moving picture show in a store on Fort Street, Victoria, BC and the next year Miss Kate Rockwell established the Orpheum on Yates Street, Vancouver. The latter was sold to George W. Boyd in 1902 and was renamed La Petite Crystal Theatre. But the first exhibitor in Vancouver was John A. Schuberg, who opened the Edison Electric Theatre, one of the tents known as “black tops,” on Cor¬ dova Street, after a season on the road with the Edison film, The Eruption of Mount Pelee. Later he helped bring movies to Winnipeg, for in 1899, using his professional name of J. M. Nash, he and W. C. Jones showed African War scenes in a 20x60 black tent. Jones opened a store show in the fall of 1902 and Schuberg the Dreamland Theatre in January, 1908. Both continued to open theatres in Winnipeg as warranted. In 1900 Countess D’Hauterive and her son came to Canada and presented films of fairy tales in convents and colleges. These Pathe films were exhibited in Montreal and many other cities, the son turning the crank and the mother lecturing. They opened a summer thea¬ tre in St. Louis but came back to Canada in the winter. They kept adding to their library and in 1904 toured the Proctor vaudeville circuit, playing each house for three weeks until their film was used up at the rate of a program a week. In February, 1900 Biograph films of South African War scenes were shown in Massey Hall, Toronto for the Cana¬ dian Patriotic Fund, under the auspices of the Toronto Garrison. In April of that year both Shea’s Toronto vaude¬ ville houses began using films at the end of the program as “chasers.” That same year George Mehl came to Shea’s from New York with a 1,000-foot pic¬ ture, Cinderella, a novelty when com¬ pared with 200-foot shows of the day. 27