Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 17, 1945)

Page 14 N the theatre, parts are 1 snared on beauty, brains, talent or on being some body’s sweetheart, but there is probably only one instance when a part was snared by small feet. It was not Cinderella, but Canada’s first lady of the theatre, Mrs. Joshua Smith, known. then as Ray Lewis. She was only seven, a tiny precocious burning-eyed child driven by the same force that has kept her active for more than half a century as publisher and editor of the Canadian Moving Picture Digest, owner of two theatres, trader and importer of hundreds of pictures and a journalist. She was to be one of the Princes in the tower in Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” but it was. the prince who had very little to say. The important part was given to a pretty child whose acting was inferior to her appearance. Seven-year-old Ray, a veteran Shakespearean even then, heard her rival in disgust and finally said to the director, “I can do better than that.” The director’s only notice was, ' “For a little one you’re cheeky.” Came the day for trying on costumes. All went well until the children tried on the shoes. The pretty child’s feet were much too large, but the shoes just fitted little Ray. On the strength of her small feet she got the part. Principals in that production were Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. The theatre was Ambrose Small’s old Grand Opera House. Ray, or Mrs. Smith, has been standing in her own shoes ever since, using her head and not her feet to get places. In those days children were not allowed to travel out of England with theatrical companies. The theatre was not considered a respectable vocation for girls, but it was the vogue to bring children to the parlor, when guests were present, to have them recite, or play their little piece on the piano. For this reason Ray was enrolled as a student at the Toronto Conservatory of Music for vocal, piano and dramatic lessons, and so well did she speak her ‘‘piece,”’ that when advance agents arrived in the city searching for children to play small parts, Ray invari ably got them. 1 was the nostalgic days of heavy classical drama, long before the lesser 16-scene melodramas like, ‘‘Bertha, The Sewing-Machine Girl.’ To get and hold a part, it required versatility, perfect diction and a resonant voice that reached not only the first, but the packed second Canadian FILM WEEKLY Ray and Jay=‘The Smith Family’ A Queen and an Ace mene ay RAY LEWIS AND SON JAY gallery, the origin of the phrase, “playing to the gallery, or the gods.” It required a figure and a grand manner for the elaborate costumes, and Ray Lewis had all the requirements She still has them today in her strong resonant voice that enunciates every syllable of every word, and the taste for extremely smart and individualistic clothes. With special permission and a stern chaperone, little Ray Lewis was allowed to travel Ontario in the various productions. She ‘Mile. Frou-Frou,” ‘Galatea’ “Under Two Flags” — ‘“Nydia” in “The Last Days of Pompeii,” “Juliet” in “Romeo and Juliet,’ “Mlle Frou-Frou,”’ “Galatea” and “Parthenia” in “Ingomar the Barbarian,” in which latter play ——— HIS article appeared recently in Monetary Times, monthly magazine “For all Management Men in Canadian Industry, Government and Finance.” In its “Men in Government and Business” was the story (mainly) of a ‘woman, Mrs. Joshua Smith, or as she is known to the cosmopolitan crust of many cities in Europe and North America, Ray Lewis. Called “The Smith Family” and referring to son Jay as James, the article, with due respect to the author and to the magazine, does not tell the whole story of Ray Lewis. It would take a book to do that—and Ray Lewis is writing it now. To Canadians generally she is the person most frequently identified as personifying the verve and awareness of the motion picture industry, many years of prominence having secured her place in the minds of all directly or indirectly interested in it. The Canadian Moving Picture Digest has been under her editorial command for most of its 30 years and will shortly celebrate its accomplishment of successful operation for that period. October 17, 1945 Julia Marlowe had made a great success. “T remember in one remote Ontario town, dressing behind a screen by a big wood stove in the middle of back-stage. I was in a Grecian robe, my lonely bit of clothing, save for a pair of tights underneath, and a pair of sandals. When the curtain went up, most of the audience sat in their fur coats. It was one of Canada’s old-fashioned winters. However, I was so stage-struck, as we called histrionic ability in those days, that had I been at the North Pole, I would not have felt the cold,’ said Mrs. Smith. As she grew older, and it was more difficult for the chaperone to hear her lessons, and incidentally her mother and father objected to an actress for a daughter, Ray was obliged to go back to school. She attended Harbord Collegiate and then The University of Toronto for an Arts course. So quick at her classes was she, that in a few months she was allowed to take philosophy, psychology and English with the fourth year classes. Mrs. Smith states she received the highest marks in the class for literature, an A-Plus, but the lowest in her class for a map of Greece, a D-minus. The Arts degree, vigorously embarked upon, was never realized, because Ray had an opportunity to follow her greater love, the theatre. But the college classes were not entirely wasted. They gave her a taste for writing, and with one foot on the stage. and the other in the audience, she wrote and sold movie stories, “The Green-Eyed God’’— “The Cotton King’ — “The Prodigal Daughter” — etc. About this time Hollywood was a squalling infant, drawing much attention to itself, with the slower British Moving Picture Industry far behind. Ray, with years of sensing public reactions, recognized the shape of the future of the silver screen, and with an astuteness that has been so much a@ part of her all her life, she switched her interests to the rapidly expanding movie industry. Because of her deep respect for the many fine British players with whom she had been associated, she naturally turned towards Britain instead of Hollywood. She was determined to bring British Pictures into Canada. Such a pioneering venture did not stop her from publishing at the same time a volume of her poems, “Songs Of Earth.” Her first journey to England (Continued on Page 18) €