Canadian Film Weekly (Aug 21, 1946)

Page scan 00010 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Aug 21, 1946
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Aug 21, 1946)
Leaf #:
00010
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Film Industry Trade Magazine",Canad
Collection:
Global Cinema, Canada, and Hollywood Studio System
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 14, 2025
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August 21, 1946 Canadian FILM WEEKLY Page 11 “More Hard Work*’=Wwarner screen fare of the world by its bold experimentation. On hand to hear the results was Haskell Masters, Dominion general manauger, who adressed the convention and reported his optimism for the future of motion picture exhibition on this side of the border. He led the Canadian delegation, made up of branch managers, among them Irvin Coval, Toronto; Grattan Kiely, Montreal; Frank Davis, Winnipeg; Earl H. Dalgleish, Vancouver; Maurice Saifer, Calgary; and Mickey Komar, Saint John. Members of the Vancouver office have a right to feel proud, for every theatre in that territory played a Warner Brothers feature or short subject during the anniversary week. In the Toronto territory Pete Meyers of the sales staff was honored for having sold every theatre in his block a WB subject. GHLIGHT of the convention was the address of Jack L. Warner, vice-president and executive preducer, during which he struck a “work for peace and prosperity’ note while discussing plans for the coming year. “Now is the time for less conversation and more hard work,”’ Warner declared. ‘Opportunities for our company, the motion picture industry and the country generally never were brighter, if we quit day-dreaming and bickering, face realities and really dig in to work for the peace we all realize we must have and the prosperity it is within our power to achieve.” Colonel Warner said his own company was in the best position of its history, with 20 major feature pictures completed or before the cameras, 40 stories in preparation and an additional pool of more than 60 properties Yrom which to select productions for the coming year. In practical application of the work for prosperity slogan, Colonel Warner pledged capacity production for the company’s vast Burbank, Calif., studios througout the coming year. ITING the increase in production ccsts as the most serioug problem facing the motion picture industry today, Colonel Warner said the danger line soon will be reached unless the production and distribution divisions can hold their efforts to practical, common sense understanding of elementary business principles. “Filming costs,” he declared, “have risen 150% since pre-war Warner Brothers in Best Position in History With 20 Features Near Completion And 40 Others in Preparation (Continued from Page 1) days because the studios must pay more for stories, talent, labor, materials, and the average shooting time has more than doubled as the result of more big-scale productions. “There is only one solution,” Colonel Warner said, “and that is to more than match the increased costs with increased quality which will bring greater income. That means honest intelligent work all along the line. Our creative talent is striving for perfection of product and increased efficiency to keep costs to levels which will permit us to continue making pictures of ever increasing excellence. Distribution and exhibition efforts must match those of production.” Colonel Warner also urged the distribution men at the Atlantic City gathering to read the signs already posted by the public. : “The motion picture audience,” he told them, “is in a hard-headed shopping phase. The public is the boss and it cannot be fooled. Both production and distribution needs of the motion picture industry must realize today the hard reality of the public appraisal of films. The progress of the past 20 years, artistically and technically, has been made under the pressure of public desire for better product. We have created an obligation which must be accepted by every member of our company and the entire mo Celebration by Warner Brothers of the 20th Anniversary of Talking Pictures was not confined to the film industry. In Canada leading newspapers ran stories, pictures and editorials, while several cities offered official acknowledgment, as witness the big display banner underneath the ‘Welcome” sign on Toronto’s City Hall. In Winnipeg, a similar sign blazoned the event across the CPR Building, tion picture industry. “The motion picture industry,” Colonel Warner said, “has an unparalleled opportunity to set a pattern for harmonious cooperation not only to other industries but to the nations of the world. “We embrace all branches of the arts and sciences,’”’ he stated. “Our industrial fabric is composed of 47 diversified crafts. These widely divergent talents have established what on the whole is a magnificent record cf teamwork. If authors and labor, musicians and technicians, actors and electricians can work together in harmony, there is no reason why peoples of all nationalities can’t do likewise. ‘I strongly believe,’ Colonel Warner concluded, “that the men and women who comprise our industry, and the peoples the world over who are entertained by our product, are determined to work together for the two great goals of peace and prospcrity.” PPEARING in the pictures to be released and produced by Warner Bros. during the coming year will be Robert Alda, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Jack Benny, Humphrey Bogart, Jack Carson, Dane Clark, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Irene Dunne, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant Sydney Greenstreet, Van Heflin, Paul Henreid, Robert Hutton, Andrea King, Viveca Lindfors, Ida Lupino, Jeffrey Lynn, Mary Martin, Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Janis Paige, Lilli Palmer, Eleanor Parker, Zasu Pitts, William Powell, Claude Rains, Ronald Reagan, Zachary Scott, Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Wyman, Monty Woolley, Gig Young and many other topflight screen stars. Veteran producers who will carry the studio’s capacity production program under the executive guidance of Colonel Warner are Henry Blanke, Robert Buckner, Owen Crump, Jules Furthman, Alex Gottlieb, Charles Hoffman, Gordon Hollingshead, William Jacobs and Jerry Waid. Composing the ace directorial staff gathered by Colonel Warner to guide current and future films are Curtis Bernhardt, David Butler, Michael Curtiz, Delmer Daves, Frederick De Cordova, Peter Godfrey, John Huston, James V. Kern, Norman Krasna, Jean Negulesco, Leroy Prinz, Irving Rapper, Vincent Sherman, Don Siegel and Raoul Walsh, an