Canadian Moving Picture Digest (Jan 12, 1929)

Page scan 0003 from Canadian Moving Picture Digest

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Moving Picture Digest
Date:
Jan 12, 1929
Volume:
Canadian Moving Picture Digest (Jan 12, 1929)
Leaf #:
0003
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Film Industry Trade Magazine",Canad
Collection:
Canada, Hollywood Studio System, Early Cinema, and Global Cinema
Format:
periodicals
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library, Canadian Media Magazines Project, Paul Moore and Jessica Whitehead
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:

Canadian Moving Picture Digest

Editors: Merrick R. Nutting (1917-18), Raymond S. Peck (1918), Ray Lewis (1918-19 and 1920-54), Walter Greene (1919-20), Jay Smith (1954-57)

Canadian Moving Picture Digest (1917-57) was initially a Montréal-based rival of the first film paper in Canada, Toronto-based Canadian Universal Bulletin (1915-18, edited by W.A. Bach 1915-17, J.W. Cambridge 1917-18, Raymond S. Peck 1918). The two periodicals were combined in 1918, keeping the Digest name, but moving production to Toronto with Peck as editor. Canadian Moving Picture Digest assumed The Bulletin’s volume numbering and always claimed 1915 as its year of origin. Ray Lewis (née Rae Levinsky) was a writer and playwright, who spent time in early Hollywood’s publicity departments. She briefly took the Digest helm in 1918, then long-term editor, later owner and publisher, from 1920 until her death in 1954. Under Lewis’s leadership, the trade paper claimed to serve as a voice for independent exhibitors and advocated for a Canadian cultural presence in cinema, particularly emphasizing British films as a way to keep a distance from Hollywood. Lewis's editorials were notable for their advocacy, wit, and critique of American dominance in the Canadian film market. While initially positioning herself as an outsider, she became integrated within the industry and a true insider. She even had an ongoing correspondence with Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, advocating for the industry as a whole and supporting British film imports. She was well-known at Toronto’s Dundas Square film row as well as in New York and Hollywood. Variety’s Sime Silverman called her “the Girl Friend in Canada,” and she delighted when U.S. writers not “in the know” presumed “Ray” was a man’s name. Lewis was later an inaugural member of the Canadian Picture Pioneers, eventually the group’s first female president and Pioneer of the Year. After she died in 1954, her son Jay Smith took over editorial duties until Canadian Moving Picture Digest was bought by Nat Taylor’s Film Publications of Canada in 1957. Taylor incorporated the legacy journal into a joint masthead for Canadian Film Weekly (1942-70), which subsequently dated its roots back to the 1915 origins of the film press in Canada.

– Jessica Whitehead and Paul Moore, March 2024

Further Reading

  • Whitehead, Jessica, Louis Pelletier and Paul Moore, “‘The Girl Friend in Canada’: Ray Lewis and Canadian Moving Picture Digest (1915–1957).” In Daniel Biltereyst and Lies Van de Vijver, eds., Mapping Movie Magazines: Digitization, Periodicals and Cinema History, 127-52. London: Pagrave-Macmillan, 2021.

Date Added:
June 13, 2024
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_ Established in 1915 for ifs _ Exhibitors Subscription: $5.00 yearly Telephone: Trinit Cable: Ontocanada RAY LE WIS Ete Ye cae . “ Published by Canac Moving Picture Dig Company, Limitec 259 Spadina Ave, Tor London ‘ ffice. 80-82 Wardor St., W v 1481 Editor and Managing Director Vol. 20, No. 37. TORONTO 2, CANADA January 12th, “Carry On Sergeant” a = HE GENTLEMAN referred to in the title is not carrying on, according to military or sh manship rules, because representatives of the army, officers, and the public have refv | to sponsor this Canadian-made production. In the Famous Players Canadian Theatres in which “Carry On Sergeant” was pla} it lost money for itself and the theatres. The letters to the editors of papers in the various towns and cities, criticized the story sever and provoked a controversy which brought the theatre no business, nor good-will. When “Carry on Sergeant” played the Regent Theatre, Toronto, another Famous Play Canadian theatr e, its receipts, as has been related, were $12,000, and its expenditure $15,000 The production of this picture is said by its producers to have cost $400,000, while its public campaign cost $ 150,000. Following a plain rule of figures in relationship to estimating profits on a Motion Pictu any production of this kind made in Canada, starting off with an expenditure of one half a mill have the slightest chance of even getting its money back. The costs of distributi __ added to the costs already involved would run “Carry On Sergeant” into the million dollar c schedule; and how many productions made in the U. S., which start out with such an estimate e1 get their investment back? Most of the by a company. sixty, or more ot big productions by way of investment, are carried along by other pictures ma They are made for prestige, for Trade Mark values, they are made to sell fifi her pictures, not only for one season, but the prestige is intended to carry ov For those who handled the financing of “Carry On Sergeant” there can only be one verdic and that is, that they had no knowledge of Motion Pictures, or they were fooled. ; When the idea was first proposed, I objected to it, because it looked unsound; and I sens that again a number of representative Canadians, as well as the. public were to lose their mone on Canadian picture production. , enterprise were given to me. When | read the list, I saw therein some of Canada’s most into a conference with Col. Clarke; and the names of the men associated with th tive financiers, men whose names in Canada stand for integrity; and this persuaded me to refrai However, my first instinct in connection with this Canadian project of Col. Clarke’s was tru 7 | I felt that those today. The office of the company has closed and the picture is on the shelf. One half of a million dollars lost; and Canada again besmirched as a country in which some one uses Canadian picture roduction as a means of “grabbin some money.” p g ;