Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 8, 1943)

December 8, 1948 General Theatre s Big Bond Issue (Continued from Page 1) $250,000 4%4 per cent sinking fund bonds maturing Dec. 1, 1955. Both of the above issues are priced at par and accrued interest. The company owns nine motion picture theatres in Vanvouver and environs. Seven of these theatres are leased to and operated by Famous Players Canadian Corporation Limited and the other two are leased to and operated by Odeon Theatres of Canada, Limited. Company revenues are largely derived from rental of the properties; also from investments valued at $399,937. Average earnings for the three years ending Dec. 31, 1942, available for interest on the new issues after all charges, including depreciation, and provision for income and excess profits taxes amounted to $84,052, equal to over four times annual interest requirements. The issue is being offered through W. C. Pitfield & Company, Ltd., who maintain offices in Montreal, ‘Toronto, Ottawa, Saint John, Halifax and Moncton. Must Move Quebec Theatre 75 Feet Officers of the summer fair at Sherbrooke, Quebec, have asked the City Council to order the moving of the Century Theatre 75 feet back from the road leading to the fair. Under the terms of an agreement made at the time of the theatre’s construction in 1937, this order must be carried out. Simcoe Town Council Bans Midnight Shows A by-law regulating the hours of theatres, dance halls and other places of amusement so that they will no longer be able to present midnight shows, was passed last week by the Simcoe, Ontario, town council. The regulation does not apply to any performance given by charitable or paeetatie | organizations. Hitler Captures Marshall Rommel Swedish radio reports that Paramount’s “Five Graves to Cairo,” has just been opened in Berlin before an audience comprising Der Fuerher, Marshall Rommel and many other high-ranking personages. According to Stockholm, the Nazis captured a print and though the place and date of capture | haven’t been revealed, it is regarded as the outstanding German conquest of recent months, eC Canadian FILM WEEKLY ‘ Be_RRIETURE (CKUDS. Fe Sketches in Sulphuric Acid—No. 7 These press releases were written by a movie publicity man while suffering from Acute Blurbitis, a condition resulting from slow saccharine seepage. The effect of Acute Blurbitis {s violent revulsion, leading to reversal of customary conduct. The publicity man has now fully recovered and is back in line but his soul, in the form of these uninhibited ecpressions, goes marching on. The persons and events depicted herein are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons {[s purely coincidental—except in such cases where someone recognizes himself and is foolish enough to admit it by getting mad publicly. SCREEN WRITER Wilbur Shmaltzgreeb, who wrote the screenplay of “Gone With the Windbag’”’ and other notable productions, has just been renewed by Elba Studios with a seven-year all-option no-contract deal. He is currently busy preparing his original story, “The Brothers Kalamazoo,” for early production. The film, to be directed by Gregor Kuchka, will star the screen’s most popular love team, Ana Thema and Mischa Mashoona. Screen rights to “The Brothers Kalamazoo” (not the real title, by the way) will cost Elba nothing, since if was in the public domain—a street corner trash can, to be specific. Wilbur, who still has his pre-Hollywood habits, was poking around the civic receptacle and came-upon a tattered old book by an unknown foreigner. He changed the title and the locale, the action now taking place in modern Michigan instead of darkest Russia. Wilbur, being a republican, doesn’t believe in royalties. He figures that by this time the real author has probably hocked his typewriter for the initiation fee to the Dishwashers’ Union, preferring to work in a place where eating is an ordinary occurrence. Dimout or no, Wilbur has been lit up since the celebration of Admiral Dewey’s homecoming. Now known as Johnny One Shot, there was a time when he slugged the stuff the clock around. One shot is enough now because Wilbur is a victim of self-renewing saturation. His friends, when commercial sources of liquor are cut off, get their supply by tossing Wilbur into a washtub and stamping on him in the manner of Sicilian peasants beating out wine. Wilbur’s one-shot limit hasn’t interfered with his continual wooziness. This is because his nose is built so close to his mouth. He talks so much that an unending draft of alcohol fumes is created which keeps him free wheeling. It’s the closest thing to perpetual motion yet discovered. His didoes are a legend in Hollywood. He is reputed to be Kraft-Ebbing’s famed Mr. X and it’s said that trying to figure him out gave Freud an inferiority complex. When plastered, his inhibitions vanish and he is his real self, giving expression to his innermost desires. Once, in that state, he was caught robbing his own trunk. But mainly Wilbur imagines himself back in his childhood days and this led him to writing for the screen. High and uninhibited, he chanced on Joe Wagg, Filmland’s famed practical joker, in a bar-room and invited him to join in his (Wilbur's) favorite boyhood game, that of scribbling dirty words on tombstones, Joe, for a gag, introduced Wilbur to Napoleon Klainer, production chief of Elba, as an outstanding “crypt” writer. Klainer figured “crypt, script, shmipt, as long as _ he’s healthy.” He asked Wilbur for a story and was told the only one the latter knew, that of Cinderella. Never having heard it before, Klainer hired Wilbur to write it for the screen, suggesting with a showman’s instinct, that the name of the leading character be changed to Peggy Pushkin and a girdle be substituted for the glass slipper. Wilbur has written the same story six times each year for seven years. Because of alcoholic confusion it comes out with a new twist each time. He is expected to receive a special Oscar at the next Academy dinner for being the most consistently original writer in Hollywood. Page 11 A Qe! ico sing a lensed % SUBMARINE BASE John Litel Alan Baxter Iris Adrian TIGER FANGS Frank Buck Buster Crabbe Fifi D’Orsay THE GIRL FROM MONTEREY Armida Veda Ann Borg HARVEST MELODY Rosemary Lane Johnny Downs Radio Rogues The Vigilantes THE BLACK RAVEN George Zucco Noel Madison BOOK NOW! Producers Releasing Corporation LIMITED Executive Offices: 277 Victoria St., Toronto, 2, Ont.