Canadian Film Digest (Jan 1973)

— >= Page 14 International The Godfather has become the highest grossing picture in history. $81.5 million has been earned, $5.3 million in Canada and the rest in the U.S. Gone With The Wind was the previous leader at $77.03 million ... The Godfather and Diamonds Are Forever registered the highest grosses for 1972 in British theatres. Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Fiddler on the Roof were in third place. . . Critics’ Awards for 1972: New York Film Critics: Lawrence Olivier, Best Actor for Sleuth. Ingmar Bergman Best Director and his film Cries and Whispers Best Picture. Best Actress Liv Ullman for The Emigrants and Cries and Whispers. Robert Duvall, Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather. Jeannie Berlin, Best Supporting Actress for The Heartbreak Kid. Best Screenplay, Ingmar Bergman for Cries and Whispers . . . National Society of Film Critics: Luis Bunvel Best Director and his film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Best Picture. Best Actor, Al ’ Pacino for The Godfather. Best Actress, Cicely Tyson for Sounder. Best Supporting Actor Joel Grey for Cabaret and Eddie Albert for The Heartbreak Kid. Best Supporting Actress Jeannie Berlin for The Heartbreak Kid. Best Screenplay, Bergman for Cries and Whispers . . The Godfather is still expected to sweep the Academy Awards ... Ballotting is now on for the annual Photoplay Awards ... U.S. attendance and box-office receipts have risen by 16.5 per cent and 20.1 per cent respectively in the first eight months of 1972. . Britain forecasts better times for the cinema industry, but not until 1975. Peter Snell has been appointed managing director of British Lion. At 32, he is the youngest in the company’s history . , . Princess Grace and Prince Rainier received Variety Patron Life Group membership silver cards at the annual ball in Leeds, England .. . Cinerama Releasing has terminated distribution merger talks with Allied Artists. No reason was given... Carl W. Stalling passed away recently. He was 84, He created the music for the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons and devised the Silly Symphonies. From 1936-1958 he worked at Warners, the sole composer for animated cartoons in the company. Technical info: Deluxe General has developed a computerized system for absolute color processing. An operation previously requiring 10 minutes per strip can now be done JANUARY 1973 CANADIAN BOX OFFICE STATISTICS Scenes in .a matter of seconds . . . Trans-International Films has developed a_ totally automated system for TV presentation of movies over the antenna system of hotels. No special wiring is necessary; activation occurs when the guest calls the switchboard to request one of up to twenty-three movies. A hotel with only 100 rooms can install the service cheaply enough to merit its use. Changes: The Motion Picture Daily and Motion Picture Herald have become the QP Herald, a Time-Magazine weekly expanded to cover the entertainment industry completely. National Association of Concessionaires report the appointment of Clifford D. Lorbeck as assistant to the President Harold F. Chesler . Hartwell T. Sweeney has been named Program Chairman for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers’ 113th Semiannual Technical Conference to be held April 813 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel in Chicago. The two-day special subject symposium, to be chaired by George Tressel, will discuss ‘‘Video Cartridge, Cassette and Disc Player Systems-Packaged Programming.”’.. . The Mid-West Film Conference, to be held Jan. 26-28 at the Orrington Hotel, Evanston, Illinois, will feature NFB animator Ryan Larkin and Lyle Cruickshank .of the NFB. Premise of the conference is creative use of film in education . Jack Warner aoneted $250, 000. to build the, film theatre for the. American Film Institute in,,, the John. F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing :, Arts in, Washington . ;,. And the AFI.presented. a tribute to the screen: ‘writer at the Los Angeles... Country Museum last month. There seems to) be a new trend developing to honor the screenwriters’ achievements and contributions . And the Institute is publishing a guide to college film and TV courses in early 1973. Casting: Goldie Hawn in The Sugarland Express for Universal; also in pic are Michael Sacks and Ben Johnson. Anthony Quinn in The Don is Dead for Universal. Joanne Woodward in The Last of the Snow Queen for Columbia. Mia Farrow will play Daisy in Paramount’s The Great Gatsby. Elizabeth Taylor in Ash Wednesday for Paramount. James Mason joins Paul Newman and Dominique Sanda in The Mackintosh Man for Warners. Burt Reynolds in the Domino Clip for War ners. Bob Dylan in Billy The Kid and Pat Garrett for MGM. BOOKS ON FILM IN TRIBUTE TO ADOLF ZUKOR, A LITERARY GUIDE TO THE MOGULS It is hard to believe that the film industry is by now several generations old, but what more graphic symbol to bring that fact to our attention than the 100th birthday of Adolf Zukor? Zukor, instrumental in the formation of Paramount and Famous Players, should be as much of a relic as the hand-cranked camera. Yet he still has an office at Paramount, and the same secretary as he had forty years ago! Who says Hollywood is dead? Of course the office, like the dinner in his honor, is merely a tribute. His times, methods and ideas have passed. The tycoons are a part of Hollywood history, even the ones like Jack Warner who are still active. So, as the Hollywood Golden Age fades into memory, it becomes time for books about the industry and the men who founded it and nurtured it through its growing years, the movie moguls. Four books about the studio heads have been issued in paperback, and for the most part they offer fascinating glimpses of the Hollywood that was. Unfortunately only two offer any insight. The Movie Moguls, by Philip French Pelican, $1.50 Philip French is a journalist, BBC producer, and a member of the British Film Institute’s Production Board for experimental filmmaking. He calls his book ‘‘An Informal History of the Hollywood Tycoons’’ but he really means an informal sociological study. The book's strength lies in his viewpoint, which is that Hollywood was created by a group of penniless immigrants attracted to a new industry with unknown potential. Predominantly Jewish; lacking in education but not without a natural artistic sense, they came to America, dabbled in jewelry, furs, and other usual businesses. As people flocked to their nickolodeons they saw a new, possibly even the last, mass industry of the century. And they acted. With a combination of survival of the fittest, a willingness to gamble, and a sense of the flamboyant, they built the industry. What was their greatest strength was forgotten, however, and by the late thirties they, were conservalive to the point of causing real hurt to people. The culmination was the Investigations of the late forties and the Hollywood Blacklist, an exercise in incredible Jack Warner, one of the last active moguls, on the set of his independent production, 1776. hypocrisy. But what French is saying is that, given their origins, which they fled, and their success, patriotism, conservatism and silliness was bound to result. More important is what happened in the overall picture: a mass enlertainment so powerful that no one really knew its effect. The Moguls, by Norman W. Zierold Avon, $1.50 Zierold takes no such overall view; he takes no view at all. This book is mainly a collection of anecdotes, some clichéd and some new. He divides the ‘‘Power Princes ’’ into companies and chapters, but becomes bogged down because there is no central exposition of the development of the whole industry. We never understand where everyone fits into the whole puzzle. And it is a puzzle: Louis Mayer had one son-in-law, David Selznick, working for MGM But to prevent rivalry he helped Zanuck finance Fox's merger with Twentieth Century, so his other son-in-law could work there. Zierold never sorts out the Famous PlayersLasky-Loew-MGM-Paramount mess, and so on. The reader is left with a few Goldwynisms, several portraits of Louis B. Mayer using all his The Canadian Film Digest DISTRIBUTOR FILM CITY THEATRE (seats) LENGTH TOTAL OF RUN GROSS Astral Rentadick Toronto Capitol (822) 11 days 5,200 Cinepix Wedding in White Toronto International (597) 9 wks 50,000 Hamilton Jackson Square No. 2 (424) 4 wks 13,000 Ottawa Capitol Sq. No. 1 (499) 5 wks 24,000 Bellevue’ Snowball Express Toronto Multiple 1 wk 75,000 Hamilton Cinema (589) 1 wk 12,000 Ottawa Place de Ville (1228) 1 wk 13,200 Sudbury Empire (1229) 1wk 7,000 Halifax Paramount (1166) 1 wk 10,000 Montreal Multiple 1wk 20,000 Winnipeg North Star 1 (689) 1 wk 16,000 Calgary Chinook (718) 1 wk 11,500 Brentwood (626) 1 wk 10,000 Edmonton Capilano (870) 1 wk 16,000 Vancouver Multiple 1wk 30,000 Columbia Young Winston Toronto Fairlawn (1164) 13wks 120,000 Valachi Papers Montreal Lowes (2056) 8 wks 130,000 Butterflies Are Free Winnipeg Garrett No. 1 (618) 15 wks 104,000 Oliver Toronto Multiple 2 wks 30,000 MGM. Great Waltz '., Toronto Glendale (704) 8 wks 88,935 Has) st . Winnipeg — Grant Park (742). 11 days 13,706 y ini eh , Ottawa Nelson (799) 11 days 16,794 HOw! vi Hamilton _ Century (705) lidays 12,655 Travels With My Aunt. Toronto Uptown No. 3 (408) 11 days 21,336 , Yorkdale Cinema (464) lldays 20,323 Montreal Westmount (700) 11 days 11,662 NationalGen. Judge Roy Bean Toronto Uptown No. 1 (949) lidays 27,000 The Getaway Toronto Yonge (1639) lidays 60,032 Vancouver Capitol (1394) 11 days 36,278 Montreal Capitol (2378) lidays 36,985 London Capitol (1140) lidays 22,933 Edmonton Paramount (1429). ll days 31,123 Hamilton Jackson Sq. No. 2 (424) lidays 19,646 Up The Sandbox Toronto Towne (693) lldays 21,102 ; Ottawa Little Elgin (410) lldays 12,699 Paramount Lady Sings the Blues Toronto Uptown No. 1 5 wks 96,800 Skyline, Yorkdale Multiple lidays 52,400 Vancouver Downtown (696) 4wks 38,900 Multiple lldays 14,200 Twentieth Poseidon Adventure Toronto Carlton (2186) lldays 122,036 Century-Fox Montreal Palace (2043) lidays 66,862 Vancouver Orpheum (2872) lidays 80,705 Sounder Toronto HollywoodN. (696) 13wks 146,362 . United Artists . Manof La Mancha Toronto University (1382) 3 wks 75,000 Montreal Placedu Canada (815) 3 wks 36,000 Vancouver Park (680) ~ 3 wks 27,000 Fellini’s Roma Toronto York No. 2 (462) 2wks 16,500 Vancouver Varsity (499) 2 wks 17,000 Montreal Dauphin (687) 2 wks 14,200 The Mechanic Vancouver Coronet (764) 1lwk 19,000 Calgary Grand No. 2 (705) 1lwk 9,200 Winnipeg Odeon (1104) lwk 11,000 i ’N Tillie Toronto Hyland No. 2 (555) lwk 15,708 bag Bi Hyland No. 1 (800) 4days 20,180 Windsor Vanity (940) lidays 14,867 Vancouver Vogue (1234) , lidays 14,580 Edmonton Odeon (1124) lldays 15,856 Winnipeg Garrett No. 2 (810) Ildays 12,964 Warner Bros. Jeremiah Johnson Toronto Uptown No. 2 (605) 1 wk 15,400 Deliverance Toronto Hollywood S. (917) 13wks — 158,730 Hamilton Jackson Sq. No. 1 lIldays 15,782 Vancouver Downtown (696) lidays 27,848 Winnipeg _ Polo Park (406) lidays 10,777 Emigrants Toronto International (597) lldays 11,200 arts to get results from people, and stories that remain unconnected and lacking in context. Selznick, by Bob Thomas Pocket Books, $1.25 Thomas has long been the Hollywood biographer, and this book about David O. Selznick follows two similar ones on Irving Thalberg and Harry Cohn. We have, says Thomas, a Trilogy. The description is far too pretentious. This book is only a superficial list of events in Selznick’s life. We see the boy David — Thomas always calls him David — decide, by writing out the entire alphabet what his middle initial should be. Selznick’s greatest work was Gone With the Wind, but all we are given is a chronological list of certain facts about the production. What we want is to find out what made Selznick tick. Revenge for the treatment given to his father? Egomania from his experience as a teenage producer? And what are we to deduce, in the light of today’s pre-occupation with the director as the creative force, from Selznick’s obvious role as producer, director, designer, etc. Thomas offers nothing to further our speculation. The book is as much of a piece of the past as Selznick’s selling a star’s contract. Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking A Biography of Darryl F. Zanuck, by Mel Gussow. Pocket Books, $1.25 This is the type of biography we are looking for. All the facts there, all the events are covered, and enough of the names are named. But there is more. Not only is Gussow the best writer of the four, he also has something to say himself, about Zanuck, the pictures, and the industry. We learn not only the extent of Zanuck’s participation in each film — extensive: he wrote, edited, chose personnel, and even directed — but also that Zanuck was a true producer. Able to assess a film or a studio, reorganize it if necessary, and know its strengths and weaknesses immediately. ‘He was called one of the greatest editors in the business, and he could gamble on subject matter or people better than the rest. Gussow takes this information a step further, and tries to help explain Zanuck’s personality and his life. He has help, of course, because Zanuck talked to him often, but he has taken his raw material and produced a true portrait, not just a sketch.