Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 20, 1944)

WILLIAM P. COVERT HE boys in the booths are | the quietest and least ap parent members of any theatre staff. So they have a man to speak their piece. His name is William P. Covert. Bill has been talking up for them for many a year now in satisfactory fashion to all concerned. Even the theatre owners. It was nine years after Edison unveiled his new-fangled gadget for throwing animated photographs on a screen when sixteenyear-old Master Covert, a printer’s devil earning three dollars per week and apprenticed as a member of the International Typographical Union, abandoned that ancient means of communication for the riches offered by the newest. For six dollars a week young Covert went to work in John Griffin's Lyceum Theatre in Toronto. A lot of footage has run through the machine since those pioneer days when the projection device was fastened to a table and the film emptied into a bag or box for rewinding later. The projectionist was more than a human appendage to a machine then. He had to be something of an actor too. Films were poorly edited and there were few sub-titles. Patrons had paid a high price for their entertainment—five cents for a ree] with four subjects and the privilege of hearing an illustrated song-——and they were entitled to know what those people were so excited about on the screen. So the operator would describe the celluloid goings-on as they developed and he composed his own commentary as he went along. Bill remembers shouting that “the villains have placed the girl on the tracks and the train yp EE ENE ENE EE NE EE 4 PLAZA THEATRE Tilbury, Ont. Pi De Di AD DU Pa SRE CREE ME MEHL NEN AWARD BILL COVERT Negotiator is liable to grind her to pieces if she isn’t saved in time” and so on. That film was “The Great Train Robbery,” of course. The folks were used to these noises coming from behind them but they were still not used to films. In “The Great Train Robbery” the screen suddenly filled with the front of the onrushing train and members of the audience made a break to get out of the way of the horrible monster. “Now don’t get excited,” Bill used to shout at them. “It’s only ® moving picture.” The projectionist, under those conditions, had to be an unacademic authority on all things. Once Bill described a man as “staggering across the desert in 125 degrees of heat,” only to have it pointedout afterwards that human life couldn’t survive in it. There was a picture in which Kit Carson killed eleven Seminole Indians and Bill informed the audience at every show that these were the last of that tribe. Not until some years ago did he Jearn that they are still well represented on this vale ‘of commerce and doing a thriving business with tourists in Florida. 1 Sie Covert, having escaped being a tramp printer, became a tramp projectionist. Well, not exactly. He stayed with John Griffin’s collection of high-class names for a year. Griffin, a circus man with Barnum & Bailley for 21 years, had knocked out store fronts and put theatre exteriors in their place. He borrowed New York’s famed titles for them—Trocadero, etc.—and set up a Toronto movie circuit. At that time the Bennett Theatrical Enterprises, with headquarters in London, Ontario, had from twelve to fifteen houses across Canada, some of them deyoted entirely to films. George F. Driscoll, the general manager, later active in the Trans-Canada circuit, made Covert chief projectionist, swinging around the circult and handling the projection at the opening of new houses. The Bennett people were ambitious. Covert had been ordered to go to Jamaica to open their house there but the death of Bennett changed that, The Trans-Canada circuit, incidentally, bought the theatre interests of the late Ambrose J. Small for one million dollars and the cheque for that amount has figured in imaginative writers’ accounts of his still-unsolved disappearance, Trans-Canada eventually faded out. Bill worked for the Bennett people for a couple of years, then went from St. John to Wiarton, Ontario, where he worked for a Buffalo fellow who had set up one of the town’s three houses. After about a year he came back to work where he had started out, the Crystal Palace, formerly the Lyceum, which had been taken over by L. J. Applegath. HEN the idea of a projectionists union came up in 1909, it was not exactly cheered by the theatre owners. The boys were for it, however, and with good reason. They were spending half their lives at the machine a half day at a time. Covert started at 10 a.m, and worked through until 11 p.m. on four of the six days and had two nights off. And in none of your modern, safe and comfortable projection booths. Six dollars per week for a tenhour day was the usual condition. His union activity cost him his job and there was a while when he couldn't get work. At the end of 1910 Bill became the projectionist at a new and classy house called the U Kum, which was built by George Perry, a printer, and Joe Barrett. He worked there until he became the business agent of the union. Covert was instrumental in the formation of Local 173, which was obligated and chartered by the IATSE one November 17, 1909. There were twenty-two members then. Recognition was won through a general strike in 1912. At the same time the boys won their battle for government inspection and safety control and succeeded in having the late Bob Newman appointed as chief inspector. All contracts and conditions are established through friendly negotiation and arbitration ever since the union signed its first contract in 1917. Members receive sick benefits and $2,000 blanket insurance. The winning of overtime was considerable of a triumph. And today that membership of twenty-two has jumped to 230, “We enjoy the finest possible friendship and cooperation with our employers,” says Bill. DILL COVERT, after so many years of service, is known at home and across the line as an honest, hard-working, friendly and fearless representative. He learned how not to be afraid in early days of organization, for nine months elapsed between the the organization meeting and the issuance of an IATSE charter— and Bill couldn't get a job during that time. He started out as chairman of the Board of Trustees, became vice-president and was elected president for 1917. But in the middle of his first presidential term he was yanked out of office to become business manager and first official organizer. In 1918 Bill Covert became an IATSE vice-president and he has been one ever since. But in 1918 he was seventh vice-president and today he is second y.-p. and one of the senior officials. His long service to Labor hasn’t been confined to his own field. For twenty-two years he has been a director of the Labor Temple and for thirty-two years he has been a delegate to the Toronto and District Trade and Labor Council. He has been chairman of its Legislative Committee. Bill has been going along quietly these many years, doing the best he can to keep peace in the industry—but not at any price. He has kept his nose out of politics, a good thing for a good negotiator. And he doesn’t drink or smoke. You couldn't in those hazardous projection traps of other days and so he never got started on those habits. He loves fishing. It might be mentioned while referring to personal matters that he has two sons and two sons-in-law in the armed forces. Bill Covert isn’t worried about television — the theatre industry will control it when it comes, he says. He thinks that there is a great future for the motion picture industry in Canada. Helping that future become great will be the projectionists, whose work is the heart of the theatre industry. They have a pride in their craft and a great sense of responsibility. Their organization is a guarantee of sound and skilled workers. No exhibitor whose business has become adjusted to union conditions ever wants to return to the haphazard old days. The right to collective bargaining has come into its own in recent years—after many years of struggle. The worker who benefits from it owes a nod of approval to the Bill Covert type, whose youth was devoted to establishing the worker's rights. The employer whose labor problem has been solved by collective bargaining should also be grateful to these same men. Employer and employee hold Bill Covert, moving picture and labor pioneer, in the highest regard,