Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 17, 1943)

4 March 17, 1948 Canadian FILM WEEKLY Page » Mollywood Gets a Going-Over Says War Clips Arriving Late War effort trailers are arriving late in some places and limiting the efforts of theatre managers to help the campaigns, it is indicated in a letter from H. S. Humphrey, manager of the Windsor, Grenfell, Sask. “We in small towns,” writes Mr. Humphrey, could do a better job if trailers and news clips on all these various campaigns were released at least a week earlier than in the past. “As an example of the lateness of these trailers, the one on Ra~ tion Distribution released in firstrun houses on February 19th could be used only to the end of the following week, at which time the Rationing offices were closed. The news clip then became useless. Had it been released one week earlier a vast number of theatres would have been privileged to have given needed publicity. The public is slow at understanding the facts of such things, as many persons applied for new books after the offices were closed.” The Windsor, Grenfell, and the Rex, Whitewood, netted almost $100 for the Aid to Russia fund with a show each. Regular fees prevailed but many contributed more. “God must have loved the children,’’ writes Mr. Humphrey, “he made so many of them, and a program is not complete without the front seats being filled with Canada’s future, if impatient, citizens.” Mr. Humphrey is busy on the Red Cross campaign. Jim Foy Succeeds Osier in Oshawa James I. Foy succeeds Leon Osier, veteran manager, who resigned recently from his post at the Regent theatre, in Oshawa. Jim Foy has been associated with the Motion Picture Industry since the last war, in film distribution. He commenced his activities with Paramount and later served with Fox and Universal. He pioneered the use of the 16mm. film in Canada, and more recently has been associated with Ideal Films and Sovereign Films. Cashier in RCAF, WD Thelma Minto, for three years at the Dominion, Victoria, B.C., as an usherette and cashier, who joined the RCAF, (Women’s Division), has been transferred back to the coast after taking her training in the East. A 9 English Editor Pans Cinema City For Misleading Pictures of Peoples It is generally agreed that the content of Hollywood films will change much after the war. The war established more strongly than ever the reliance the rest of the world has on Hollywood product. Hollywood, of course, has been quite domestic in its characterizations and viewpoints. American life has been exaggerated, with Americans and Canadians expected to discount dramatic license. But the world has been taking the films literally. Campbell Dixon, film critic of the London Daily Telegraph, had this to say about American insulavity: “Millions of Britons visualise America as a vast Dead End where you run grave risk of being sandbagged at every corner and tough guys of 12 beat up their mothers. Millions of others see it as a streamlined paradise, where the average housewife lives in a penthouse, drives a glittering motorcar, and has the washing done by a machine while she listens to a chromium-plated radio and entertains a typist in sables, a chorus girl in trouble and Mrs. Astor. “We may retort that Kansas City pictures the Englishman as a smutty-faced pygmy in a slum (I was recently asked in America whether all cockneys wore pearly suits), or as a toothy young man with a monocle and no forehead dawdling in Piccadilly. “a O caricatures to do not make one photograph, and the sooner the film people on both sides of the Atlantic realize that they have the obligations that go with power, that they have unequalled opportunities to spread truth, understanding and good will, the better the chance of the two nations co-operating to prevent more post-war chaos and the rise of another Hitler. “Why, it may be asked, do films everywhere present so false a view of life? For many reasons. On the screen the normal is not news. Most people are romantics. They insist, so producers tell us, on heroines with eyelashes on which you can hang a hat, heroes braver in every film, backgrounds rich and gay or as terrifying as Mrs. Radcliffe’s. “This, I think, is specially true of the United States. There, side by side with the unrelenting realism of a Dreiser and the brilliant satire of a Sinclair Lewis, there is still that love of the fantastic, the grotesque and the gigantic—the essence of Romanticism—displayed earlier in writers as different as Edgar Allan Poe, Bill Nye, and Mark Twain. “Again, the American, though he may not relish criticism from outsiders (who does?) is savagely critical of his own institutions. No country has ever produced more scarifying documents than books like ‘Elmer Gantry,’ plays like ‘Dead End’ and ‘Tobacco Road,’ films like ‘Fury,’ ‘They Won't Forget’ and ‘I Was a Fugitive’ and & score of others lashing cruelty and corruption. 7 ORKS like these are social correctives as valuable as ‘Candide’ or ‘The Jungle.’ But though faithful to some aspects of the American scene at a given time and place, they do not present and are not intended to present a fair picture of America as a whole. “We too have a taste for the grotesque, but the savage English satires of Hogarth and Gilray on individuals have softened into a good-humored, wishy-washy denigration of the race in general. It is not without significance that the typical Englishman of our comic artists has degenerated from the powerful John Bull to that miserable abstraction, popular in the cartoon as meek citizen, the Little Man. “This is sad and bad. At a time when the physique of the nation is better than it has ever been before, if vital statistics and the evidence of ceilings, suits of armor and coffins are worth anything; at a time when we must convince the world that we are a tough and virile people able to hold our own in any company—at this time the typical Londoner is portrayed as a ridiculous little man with a bowler hat, umbrella, long pointed nose and practically no chin. You don’t catch the Germans or Russians making gaffes like that. “In peacetime all this distortion of men and manners may have Seemed no great matter. Now we know better. The propaganda chicks are coming home to roost. “TJOLLYWOOD'S picture of the United States is fitting in beautifully with Dr. Goebbel’s picture of the corrupt and lawless plutocracy. Hundreds of British films have put it into the heads of people abroad that the 45,000,000 inhabitants of these isles are haughty aristocrats always biting on the bullet, comic cockneys or rural oafs; which again suit the Herr Doktor admirably. “It is surely not taking the screen too seriously if we agree with our American friends that jests of such proportions are too dangerous to be funny. We do not want all our films to be social documents or propaganda, but we have the right to ask that a good proportion reflect our world as it is.” H. M. Warner, Warner Bros. (left) and Joseph E. Davies, former USA Ambassador to Russia, whose best sell president of er “Mission to Moscow,” has just been filmed by Warner Bros. They met to discuss plans for making the premiere a tribute to our Russian allies. H. M. Warner personally made the deal with Davies to bring “Mission to Moscow” to the screen. Money paid for film rights was turned over by Davies to United Nations Charities. Davies also wrote and appears in a prologue to the picture. Russian Film Experts Will Study Hollywood Russian film experts have arrived in this country and gone to Hollywood. It may be the prelude to a greater exchange of pictures, more or ours going to the Soviet, more of theirs coming here. Russian like movies so well male stars can’t be drafted or even volunteer for military service unless film producers release them. Although that country has 25,000 theatres, it makes only 100 pictures a year, so films have a long run. Loew’s “Great Waltz” is in its fifth year there. This Sort of Thing Should Be Checked In Ottawa last week three youthful ushers pleaded guilty before Allan Fraser, judge of the juvenile court, to contributing to juvenile delinquency by letting girls under 16 into the Rialto Theatre unaccompanied. They were let go on suspended sentence, Managers must make ushers aware that they must in no way exceed their authority at any time. A violation of a by-law behind the manager's back can have serious results for themselves and the theatre.