Canadian Film Weekly (Sep 22, 1943)

re September 22, 1943 Canadian FILM WEEKLY Page 7 Film Men Reap Hick Marvests One of these days he'll clear thee land. Harry works only part of his farm because, as is the case with his business these days, he carries on alone. He doesn’t live on the place, which has a nice brick house on it, but runs out four times a week. Anybody who cares to can work the uncultivated sections for nothing. Harry, born at Creemore, Ontario, graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1913. He put himself through the University of Toronto working around theatres and he liked the business. So in 1919 he got into things for himself. He’s a hard-working, sincere fellow whom everybody likes. He has many a cherished memory of show business but they couldn’t blot out the yearning for his own fertile hunk of earth. You can take the boy from the country, they used to say, but you can’t take the country from the boy. Not altogether. Not that boy, anyway. x * * IN it comes to agararian enterprise Charlie Mavety’s Circle M Ranch, famed here and beyond the border, makes many a worthy place look like a B production. The Industry’s most popular courier conducts a dude depot in the Humber Valley at Kleinburg, Ontario, 28 miles from Toronto on the Barrie Highway. Eleven years ago Charlie created the ranch on what had been three separate farms. Today it covers 330 acres and it’s a target for tourists from near and far P.O. addresses. Aside from the humans who share the over-all salubrity with Charlie’s. animal boarders, the Circle M supports 80 horses, 55 head of beef cattle, 15 Guernsey cattle to provide milk and butter for the guests, 40 ducks and 350 chickens. This season Charlie hauled in 850 tons of hay, most off his own acres, the rest from the neighbors. The good Mavety earth also presented him with 80 acres of oats, five acres of potatoes and bushels of corn, beets, cabbages, etc. What Charlie doesn’t use he markets. Charlie is no banjo-playing excuse for a cowboy. He is from the plains of Saskatchewan, where men are men and there’s never any doubt about it. He brought the zest of the West with him and he still has it. He is as amiable as all get-out and popular with man and beast. Charlile first left his home on the range for the close confinement of a projection booth. He drifted into Toronto after a couple of years, got a job in a booth and left it to open a film renovation agency. From that he hopped into the delivery game. (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1) His heart had never left the West, so Charlie finally opened his own home on the range—with Ontario variations. There’s a sentimental story about the Circle M brand. Back home his mother’s stock was marked with a _ three-quarters circle. When Charlie got his own place he took his mother’s symbol, planted an M on it and used it thereafter. You could shoot a better Western on Chariie’s place than most of those pleasing the public today. One of these days Charlie probably will. * @ * ee Nathanson farm at Maple, Ontario, has provided many a film man with stiff joints and mixed memories of making hay and hey-hey. Not that the oats sowed thereon are wild. Because of the current dearth of hay heavers the boys of the Nathanson headquarters On the Square traipsed out to the farm for an old-fashioned bee. Haying is hot work, the “Nathanson Commandos” found out. Paul Nathanson wisely provided the beverage best suited to drive away their honestly-earned thirst. And it wasn’t milk from any of the 150 purebred Jersey cows on the place. Acme Farmers Dairy has first run on that. Maple Crest Farm, as this rustic retreat is known, has 450 of its 550 acres under cultivation, most of it going to feed the cows and pigs. It represents the union of five farms—practically a rural circuit—and sports a lake made through the damming of two creeks. The barn is considered to be one of the finest in Canada. Maple Crest, before the gasoline diet, was a favorite haunt of film world figures. The number of guests these days is as nothing compared with Maple Crest’s ample hospitality. Elowever, there’ll come a day. 2 th 2 Gomes that corridor of time between the end of the afternoon and the beginning of night and Secretary Ed Wells of the MPDA, Yonge Street, Toronto, has been transformed into Squire Ed Wells of Clarkson. Ed has become a busy homebody. Home is where the heart lies, the fruit thickens and the hens lay. Ed and the missus handle their five-acre farm with no outside aid. Aside from their main interest, apple and cherry trees, they raise greengages, golden bantam corn, potatoes, lima beans, etc.—all of which takes care of their table nicely, thank you. Even the proudest farmer-filmites admit that Ed’s produce is five-star stuff. The Wells’ have been acting as ' — —— ushers at Nature’s annual nuptials for three years now. Judging by | the quality of their crops, Nature appreciates their kindness. live in They a nice nine-room brick house besieged on every side by fruit trees. Both their dogs, who are usually waiting for Ed at the gate, are natura ally happy in such surroundings. Ed was an officer in the US Army during the last big tiff. On his return he moved about the film world in various capacities, landing in Canada and liking it. He says there’s nothing like the part-time rural life. = a te BAN (hee ee we mits Clair Hague, , “do you raise on place?” “Bills mostly,” drily. The Hague fruit farm, which stands where the Malton Highway begins one and a half miles from Weston, is 11 miles from the Film answered Clair Exchange building. When Clair took over eight years ago he planted apple trees. There are now 600 on the place and most of them have ten or twelve years to go before they’re grown up. Time doesn’t bother Clair because he’s seen a lot of it go by. Many 2 film has gone through the machine since Clair came into the business 33 years ago. A circus man, he hails from Brantford and used to spend the winters there off the road. Brantford, you may remember, is where the Allens started. Clair joined them in © $e Rasa CONTRACT SALES OFFICE PHOHE TR.I257 G™* FLOOR yo ur | | dian Film Exchan eneral manager. After a few v yea “Universal took ov exchange and Clair. And he’ with them since. There are berry and bushes on the Hague homestead as well as 22 acres of hay that anyone can have for the cutting and hauling. Clair is proudest of his grand stone house 8 pesca a pile of piastres to build rounded by superb shrubbery, "ie 120 feet long. On the grounds are also a log cabin bungalow and barn. Clair Hague has be of the Canadian Picture Pl every year but one since tts. in ception. “I can always turn my house into a home for decrepit film men,” | he joshed. He’d _better not repeat that. ee mightn’t always be as good as 5 it is now. ARRY PRICE’S rural habita tion, near Weston, used to be a favorite destination for film folk before gas got choked. Mrs. Price, the former “Margaret Wainwright, another filmite, was always busy welcoming visitors on summer nights. During the day she keeps her eyes on the 150 trees th e bear RELIOF cherries, plums and a tuff—while Harry is busy = spreading Superior product. They have 300 chickens and many pheasants, the latter a hobby. Next year they expect to increase every ae ng thing on the place. Harry says he'll stick a 20x40 sw imming tank somewhere handy when the war is over. E land covers four acres and runs right to the Humber River. It’s four years since Harry acquired the ground and erected a modern home on it. Harry, now sales manager for Superior, has been in the game since 1910. Originally from Montreal, he was with the Allens in Calgary, a member of the Canadian Film Exchange staff. Later he hooked up with Universal, United Artists and Regal. the fellow who hawked “Scarface” and “Hell’s Angels” about the film world and made a good thing of them. that ke ut : is 3 Qs He's Harry knows a passel of people and has seen many places in Can ada. He likes it where he is now. “I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” he says. a * a HOSE mentioned earlier aren’t all who find that it's so peaceful in the country. Others who ij have given way to their rural inclinations are Charlie Doerr, Frank Meyers, Arthur Gottleib, Oscar | Hanson, Charlie Dentlebeck, Henry | Nathanson, Ronald McClellan, Hat Hatfleld and more,