Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 8, 1944)

Page scan 00010 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Mar 8, 1944
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 8, 1944)
Leaf #:
00010
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Film Industry Trade Magazine",Canad
Collection:
Canada, Hollywood Studio System, 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 Film Weekly

  • Editor: Hye Bossin (1942-64)
  • Renamed Canadian Film & TV Bi-Weekly (1965-69, editor: Stan Helleur)
  • Renamed Candian Film Weekly(1970, editor: Ed Hocura)

Canadian Film Weekly (1942-70) was edited by Hye Bossin and published by Film Publications of Canada, Ltd., wholly owned by leading exhibitor, Nat Taylor. In the late 1930s, Taylor was head of the Independent Theatre Association and his Toronto-based chain, Twinex-Century (Twentieth Century), was the largest independent circuit in the country. In 1941, however, he negotiated for chain affiliation with upstart Canadian Odeon before leveraging a better deal and greater booking control with nationally-dominant Famous Players Canada, Ltd. No longer independent, he took ownership of the Independent Theatre Association’s semi-monthly magazine, The Canadian Motion Picture Exhibitor (1940-41), installed Hye Bossin as editor, and laid plans to relaunch in January 1942 under a new name, Canadian Film Weekly. This enduring key publication was no longer solely focused on independent exhibitors but instead covered the entire industry on a national scale–exhibition, distribution and production–with some attention given to studio news from New York and Hollywood.

Bossin was a vibrant writer with a canny way with words, admired in the industry in the United States as well as Canada. He was one of a large family who lived above their father’s secondhand shop in the Jewish “ward” downtown in Toronto. His older brother was a bookie with ties to the underground; his younger brother was a famous journalist, protégé of Walter Winchell, and Hollywood screenwriter. In contrast, Hye spent nearly two decades learning the publishing trade in a printers’ shop before trying a stint as a Hollywood publicist, then writing a column for the Toronto Star Weekly before taking Taylor’s offer to edit the Film Weekly. Bossin was central to the creation of the Canadian Film Archive, the Canadian Film Awards, and he wrote some of the first histories of early cinema in Canada, published in the first volumes of the annual Canadian Film Weekly Year Book (1951-70).

In 1957, the Film Weekly had incorporated the rival Canadian Moving Picture Digest (1917-57), and began dating its start to that paper’s earlier start as the Canadian Universal Bulletin (1915-18). Subsequent variants of the Canadian Film Weekly and its yearbooks always claimed their roots all the way back to 1915 and the origins of the film industry trade press in Canada. After Bossin died in 1964, the Weekly’s new editor, Stan Helleur, renamed the magazine Canadian Film & TV Bi-Weekly, scaling back the pace of publishing but adding a purview for television and broadcasting. The annual was renamed similarly, its subtitle amended to “Year Book of the Canadian Entertainment Industry.” An attempted renewal to weekly format in 1970, edited by Ed Hocura, was short-lived and Nat Taylor decided instead to relaunch under an entirely new title, Canadian Film Digest (1971-77) and Canadian Film Digest Yearbook (1971-86).

– Paul Moore, March 2024

Further Reading

  • Bossin, Hye. “Canada and the Film: The Story of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry.” In Canadian Film Weekly Year Book of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry, 21-41. Toronto: Film Publications of Canada, 1951.
  • Moore, Paul. “Chronicling a National History: Hye Bossin’s Canadian Film Weekly and Year Book.” In Eric Hoyt and Kelley Conway, eds., Global Movie Magazines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024.

Date Added:
August 01, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

March 8, 1944 "AZ Was There were 31 new motion picture theatres opened in Canada during 1942, according to the report of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Ottawa,—a drop of 22. from the number opened in 1941. These figures include community halls in the Prairie provinces in which permanent projection equipment had been installed. Theatres remodelled and reopened were 13 as compared with 18 in 1941. The number of theatres closed during 1942 was 37, Which is 32 less than the figure of the previous year. Quebec, with 11 new places where commercial showings took place, led the provinces. Saskatchewan came next with seven, followed by British Columbia with four and Manitoba with three. Prince Edward Island was the only province without a new situation. In 1941 Ontario led the rest with 21 new situations, Quebec having been second with 14. There were 1,251 motion picture theatres in operation during 1942. Employed in them during the year were 5,698 males and 3,008 females. Male employment was 523 less and female employment was 513 more than in the previous year, a reflection of the manpower situation. Though there were only seven more employees in 1942 than in 1941, the total payroll of $8,265,901 showed an increase of $1,034,276. These Saves Three Kids Herbert Wisner, manager of the Capitol, Halifax, rescued the three younger children of Mrs. John Daley during a fire in their home. Mrs. Daley was at church. Wisner got in before the firemen, who couldn’t save the structure. NOW AVAILABLE Stage Curtains, Drapes and Standee Rope in Crimson or Tangerine Velour Send in measurements for quotations and samples CANADIAN THEATRE CHAIR CO. 277 Victoria St., Toronto, Ont. Canadian FILM WEEKLY Page 11 Big Wilm Year in Canada Dominion Bureau of Statistics Presents Annual Survey of Film and Theatre Field employment figures do not include proprietors or firm members. Itinerants’ Big Year itinerant operators numbered 96 in 1942. Twelve of these, using 35 mm. equipment, played to 205,360 admissions in 1,444 days and grossed $55,050. The remaining 84, using 16 mm. equipment, operated 7,481 days and had 617,027 admissions and $164,109 in receipts. In some provinces figures were withheld to avoid disclosing individual operations but all receipts were included in the total of each division. : A. comparison with the figures of the previous year shows 2 considerable gain for the Itinerants in 1942—$27,936 for 35 mm. and $22,842 for 16 mm. operators. Admissions, Grosses Up Admissions to motion picture theatres in Canada exceeded one hundred and eighty-three and one-half millions in 1942 while box office receipts, exclusive of amusement taxes, reached a total of $46,461,097 according to the annual survey. Federal and Provincial amusement taxes collected on admissions amounted to $11,713,165. Per capita expenditure, including amusement taxes at motion picture houses, stood at $5.01 for 1942. British Columbia came first with $7.52 per person spent in this entertainment field, followed by Ontario with $6.53, Nova Scotia $5.89, Manitoba $4.39, Alberta $4.22, Quebec $3.81, New Brunswick $3.75, Saskatchewan $2.56 and Prince Edward Island $2.52. There were altogether 1,251 motion picture theatres in Canada in 1942. Admissions increased 13.0 per cent and receipts 12.3 per cent in 1942 over the preceding year. All provinces reported gains in admissions and receipts over 1941, motable increases being recorded in the cities of Halifax, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. Percentage increases in box office receipts over 1941 for the various provinces are as follows: Prince Edward Island, 26 per cent; British Columbia, 22 per cent; New Brunswick, 21 per cent; Nova Scotia, 20 per cent; Alberta, 18 per cent; Quebec, 13 per cent; Saskatchewan, 9 per cent; Ontario, 8 per cent and Manitoba, 6 per cent. Cities with increases in receipts amounting to 10 per cent or over, together with the percentage increases over 1941 are as follows: Vancouver, 25 per cent; Edmonton, 23 per cent; Calgary, 21 per cent; Halifax, 20 per cent; Hamilton, 19 per cent; New Westminster, 19 per cent; Windsor, 17 per cent; St. John, 16 per cent; Sydney, 16 per cent; Ottawa, 15 per cent; Montreal, 13 per cent; Regina, 10 per cent. 32% of Capacity Potential admissions to motion picture theatres in 1942 totalled 566,637,994. This figure represents the number of admissions possible with a full house in every theatre at every performance. Comparison with the actual number of admissions or 183,735,258 indicates that 32 per cent of the seating capacity was utilized on the average at each performance, an increase of 1 point over the corresponding ratio for 1941. The ratio for 1942 varied considerably for different provinces, ranging from 36 per cent in Nova Scotia down to 26 per cent in Saskatchewan. Ratios computed for some of the larger cities show 44 per cent for Halifax, 39 per cent for Toronto, 36 per cent for Windsor, 35 per cent for Edmonton, 35 per cent for Hamilton, 35 per cent for Quebec, 34 per cent for Calgary, 34 per cent for Vancouver, 33 per cent for Ottawa, 30 per cent for London, 30 per cent for Winnipeg and 29 per cent for Montreal. Theatres classified according to ownership show 503 moving picture houses operated by firms ewning 4 or more units, the “chain” group. Chain theatres had 70.3 per cent of the total receipts in 1942 and 66.8 per cent of the total admissions. Proprietors with only one unit operated 549 or slightly more than one-half the total number of theatres, accounting for 22 per cent of the total receipts and 24 per cent of the admissions. Singles and Duals The proportion of single feature programs shown in 1942 compared with 1941 remained unchanged. Such performances formed 38.5 per cent of the total number while double feature programs made up the remaining 61.5 per cent. The proportion of double feature programs to the total was lowest in Prince Edward Island at 1.3 per cent and highest in Quebec province at 78 per cent. Double feature programs formed 66 per cent of the total number shown in Ontario, 63 per cent in British Columbia, 61 per cent in Manitoba, 42 per vent in Alberta, 39 per cent in Nova Scotia, 37 per cent in New Brunswick and 31 per cent in Saskatchewan. Exactly one-third of the total number of theatres in Canada used double feature programs exclusively throughout the year. These theatres accounted for 49 per cent of the total admissions and the box office receipts amounted to 43 per cent of the total for 1942. In Quebec double feature programs accounted for 76 per cent of the theatre admissions and their receipts amounted to 68.5 per cent of the total for the province. Though the percentages of single and double features were the same in 1942 as in i941, there were 47,319 more performances during the latter year, which brought the total to 760,115. Exchange Figures Reports secured from 78 film exchanges engaged in supplying films to the theatres show total receipts for 1942 of $14,313,904, of which $13,892,093 represents the rental of films, $370,740 represents revenue from advertising and $51,071 receipts from other sources. Salaries and wages paid to 795 employees amounted to $1,473,943. Film releases were reported by the exchanges for the first time In the 1942 survey. These releases totalled 2,358 films of which 795 were features, 464 cartoons, 461 news reels and all cther films 638. On breaking down the number of feature films by country of origin, the reports show that 734 were produced in the USA, 42 in Great Britain and 19 in other countries.