Canadian Moving Picture Digest (May 1, 1940)

Page scan 0002 from Canadian Moving Picture Digest

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Moving Picture Digest
Date:
May 1, 1940
Volume:
Canadian Moving Picture Digest (May 1, 1940)
Leaf #:
0002
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 Picture Pioneers, 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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Canadian Movino Picture Published by i Canadian Moving Picture Established Digest Company, Limited 1915 259 Spadina Ave., Toronto ' Publication: Weekly Telephone: WAverley 4929 ee Cable: Raydigest scription: $5.00 Yearly RAY LEWIS Editor and’ Publisher Vol. 32,No.3. TORONTO The Canadian Picture Pioneer (This Is Not A History) May Ist, 1940 2, CANADA { negative start off is perhaps in attune with the times in which we live, it may express a disposi tion to shirk being positive, for the latter means that there must be concrete evidence of facts, and a readiness to get into action. I am not disposed for the performance of so much zeal and labour, it is easier to ease my conscience by “playing around with an idea”, of being neutral, as neutral as the nations of the world which are intent on gaining all the benefits of someone else’s troubles, by keeping away from the danger zone themselves. Therefore, this is not a history of the Canadian Moving Picture Industry, it is being published “just for fun”, it is the result of observation, experience, some collection of data written by The Digest through the years of its publication, and by others, but mostly delivered orally by the Canadian Picture Pioneers who have lived to tell the tale; and who on May Ist. assemble at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, for their first national meeting as Canadian Picture Pioneers. No one has previously written a history of The Canadian Picture Industry, because writing about an Infant, especially “I’enfant terrible” of an Art, which the other Arts, until in the recent years of its growth, deliberately snubbed, does not provide sufficient inspiration, or, possible remuneration for journalists who find their forte in historical recordings. You have heard the expression, “Have you ever been to Spain — No — then I can speak freely” used by those who know the subject on which they discourse, and by others who are witty if not profound conversationalists. There are enough Pioneers in Canada, to reply to any levity in respect to facts with a warning, “I vas dere Charley”, so regardless of omissions please believe me that this mariner’s trip is not a tourist trip through the years of our film history in Canada. It is not a Gulliver’s Travels, but a Pilgrim’s Progress rich with success and failure, with conquest and defeat; and with the showman’s faith and hope in the good business, the great pictures of _ Tomorrow. Motion Pictures saw the Spotlight!of their night in penny arcades, shooting galleries which enticed medicine men, circus performers, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, the cloaks and suits operator, the furrier before it became another dime business which on the adding machine recorded million dollar figures, and as such became respectable enough for a Wall Street compound interest. 1928 1938