Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 21, 1942)

. October 21, 1942 Who Threw That Curve? All the boys of the film brigade turned out to hello Monogram’s Steve Broidy and Harry Thomas at Oscar Hanson’s party for them at the King Edward Hotel, Toronto. It couldn’t have been the free lunch because most of the boys could afford to buy their own. Steve Broidy was the life of his own party. He wasn’t ashamed to kid his own product. He said, looking at the crowd and the sumptuous setup: “With an expenditure of this type and only Monogram product to get it back, Oscar Hanson will sure have to work hard!” Best sally came when Simon Meretsky recalled early days. “The first deal Oscar Hanson made in the Dominion of Canada,” he proclaimed, “was made with Simon Meretsky!” “And,” hooted Haskell Masters from somewhere in the distance, “he never got over it!” Canada Year Book Ready for Public Ine Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa, has available its 1942 Canada Year Book, an indispensable volume of what the Dominion is and does. This book is more valuable than ever today, in view of the changed life of Canada in the past year. Copies will be supplied by the King’s Printer, Ottawa, at price of $1.50 per copy, which covers bare costs, since the Bureau is anxious that as many Canadians as possible know the country’s material and vital statistics. To bring it up to the moment special war articles are included. No one interested in our life and times should be without this enlightening research record. KANN as HEATING AND VENTILATING CONTRACTORS AND ENGINEERS ‘es ron SB “ee & SATURDAY NIGHT (Mary Lowrey Ross gives the short subject a going-over.) Movie audiences apparently follow features and stars in their program selection and take the shorts and featurettes largely as they find them. This is the only way one can account for the type of short some of the studios continue to turn out with impunity, year after year; those endless musical novelties in which the noyelty is achieved by having the musicians perform lying on their backs; the inept colored cartoons which imitate most of Disney’s creatures without a touch of Disney creativeness; worst of all those pictures showing cabinet ministers’ sitting behind their desks and weighing out words, paragraphs and whole editorials, endlessly and implacably. It is hard to believe that anyone would want to waste time on this sort of entertainment. On. the other hand there isn’t any evidence that we have put up much resistance to it. We just sit there, docile and indifferent, hardly distinguishing between the trailer and the cabinet minister, and wait for the feature to open. There are plenty of good shorts available — brisk documentaries (such as Warner Brother’s recent “Divide and Conquer’) Benchley monologues, science shorts, which if they aren’t particularly scientific are always short and usually gay and diverting. If we don’t get good shorts more frequently it is obviously because we don’t ask for them; since there is this to be said for the Industry, it is always ready to rush supply promptly, and even overwhelmingly, to meet demand. (Look at Abbott and Costello.) The animated cartoons especially need a sharper checking-up from the patrons. George Pal’s Puppetoons, Popeye, and even Superman, rely on their own idiom. The rest with few exceptions lean almost entirely on Disney. Unfortunately they always borrow the least acceptable of the Disney features—his violence and fury and the gag-ideas which have been floating around so long that by sheer over-usage they belong in the public domain. Their wit, drawing and coloring are all‘ on the comic strip level, and they are frequently so incoherent that they might be run backward without anyone’s noticing the difference. Films of this sort are far below the mental level of the worst B feature and possibly the only reason we don’t protest at them is | because they are over sooner. Canadian FILM WEEKLY ee >CHICAGO SUN (Interesting. you?) “A triple feature, three shorts, one Mickey Mouse cartoon, a newsreel, but no dishes.” Canadian motion picture houses began hanging up signs along those lines last week. On September 30 the government prohibited cinema houses from giving away any free crockery or kitchen ware. Shortages, no doubt. Do they mean TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL (Wellington Jeffers, Financial Editor, discusses war plays and “Mrs. Miniver.’’) After years of striving by Ottawa to find some way of making the Canadian war effort known to the people of the United States, and in experimenting with publicity and information and propaganda bureaus and experts, our Government authorities must feel that the mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse when they see the immediate and spontaneous success of “Mrs. Miniver.” Yet they will be baffled if they seek for a clue to guide them. Few people will think, when seeing “Mrs. Miniver,” that this play was designed as war propaganda, or as anything else than as a sincere tale to show how a British family, just as recognizably human and as interested in hats and motor cars and household pets as any|! other, behaved when confronted with the grimness of modern war. I believe, and I think that most of those who have seen the picture believe, all the more that there is a great core of truth in this tale, because it depicts without any flamboyance or exaggeration the very fine spirit in which all the people of that quiet English neighborhood turned from ordinary affairs to face danger, death and destruction. <3 n = DOUGLAS GILBERT (In his book, “American Vaudeville’—McGraw-Hill, N.Y.) The reasons for its demise are as interesting as they are sad. Obviously the murderer was mechanized entertainment. Yet the early managers saw no menace when motion pictures were introduced—on the contrary, welcomed the advent of the short-reel Biograph flickers as audience “chasers’, never foreseeing the shadow of a photographed Jazz singer | coming to croon the death of vaudeville. Page 7 Coyle's Scrap Drive Big Leo Coyle, manager of the Granada, St. Catharines, Ontario, put over a good scrap drive. The Standard of that town carried the following story: When father goes to look for his rubbers and doesn’t find them, he won’t need to wonder where they went. He’ll know they were a part of those two thousand, five hundred pounds of rubber paid by St. Catharines’ children as admission to a special:-morning matinee at the Granada Theatre this morning. The children answered the appeal with the biggest response yet realized. Approximately twelve hundred packed the theatre, with hundreds turned away. Those souvenirs of a happier age, rubber tires, were dragged forth by the young people, hot water bottles and rubbers, even lengths of garden hose, which will probably cause a few awkward moments when the loss is discovered, every item of rubber the children could lay their hands on, were brought to the Granada. Even the splendid basket response of two weeks ago must fade before this example of the enthusiasm and determination of young St. Catharines. The overwhelming beginning to the Victory Bags autumn rubber drive was further increased by nineteen hundred pounds of rubber tires donated by Jack Tire Shop, Queenston Street. If such a response continues, the campaign will end the greatest ever held. Now for the householders. Be-~ gin your search. This is war and rubber is important. Jen CONTRACT SALES OFFICE PHOWE TR.1257 GT" FLOOR NN Ge G FON