Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 2, 1947)

Page scan 0003 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Apr 2, 1947
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 2, 1947)
Leaf #:
0003
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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April 2, 1947 ale Canadian FILM WEEKLY rr By-Liners Ready Annual Ball Take Care of This Right Away It will be the most terrific of Toronto to-dos, says Glenn Ireton, a supercolossal sashay of swing-and-sway. What the man says is right, I hear Jim Nairn of Famous Players and Jack Chisholm and Roy Tash of Associated Screen News saying. They are talking about the second annual By-Line Ball, now in preparation by Toronto newspaper folk, present and past. It will be held at the Royal York Hotel on June 7th. All the professional observers for the public prints—sob sisters, knights of the bathos, scribitzers, the know-and-telligentsia, etc.—will be on hand. If you look long enough and ask questions you are a cinch to meet your favorite ace of space. And plenty of headliners will join the deadliners for the evening. Film and theatre folk from Toronto and surroundings will have more fun romping with those from a sister art of communication than in their own everyday haunts of humor. Just in case .they get lonesome for their own brand of canned goods a film called “Toronto Goes to Press’ will be shown. And don’t go digging around for a pass, for the deadliners have decreed against deadheads. Too bad. It would have made a swell man-bites-dog yarn. Imagine getting a pass from a newspaperman instead of giving him one! Get in touch with the boys mentioned in the lead paragraph to make your arrangements. Or just phone or write this office and we'll take care of you. And do so soon, CHARLES LAUGHTON, ROBERT DONAT MERLE OBERON, WENDY BARRIE JOHN LODER Delicate Naughtiness Superb Comedy Drama and Spectacle All Combined in a Great Entertainment PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII Directed by Sir Alexander Korda Henry VIII is one of the few truly great pictures of all time ASTRAL FILMS IZZY ALLEN Aussies Lively Film Folk ee No Back Seat for Australia It would be hard to give an Australian an argument who maintained that his country’s film and theatre industry was a livelier and more enterprising one than Canada’s, I have come to that conclusion after a look at the 120-page 1946 Christmas number of the Film -Weekly (“The Motion Picture Authority of Australasia”). Australia, with a population of about seven mijlions, has 1,570 theatres, according to the Film Daily’s Year Book. Canada, with eleven millions, has under 1,500. The Christmas number is an example of the Australian’s interest in his country’s industry, as well as the record of it, Every type of business related to the cinema art was represented in it liberally, as well as numerous persons passing on personal greetings. Just take a look at the Ohristmas issues of the trade press of Canada, the country which, next to the United Kingdom, is the USA’s leading film customer and you’ll understand our envy. ' Perhaps it is Toronto’s proximity to the New York head offices which seems to dull the initiative necessary for Cdnadian chiefs to ask that Canada be helped towards creating a trade press worthy of so great a country. Perhaps it is the fact that American film papers flood our trade which dulls their interest in recognizing the need. In any case, the present situation in the matter of trade paper advertising is not a happy one. Australia’s Film Weekly also conducts an annual boxoffice poll and the voting is to allot ten points to the star or film mentioned first on the ballot, nine to the second and so on down to one for tenth position. The 1946 films there are pretty much the 1945 films here and the films selected were (1) National Velvet, (2) Keys to the Kingdom, (3) Spellbound, (4) Smithy, an Australian-made film, (5) Valley of Decision, (6) When Irish Eyes are Smiling, (7) Song of Bernadette, (8) Madonna of the Seven Moons, (9) Thunderhead, Son of Flicka, (10) Anchors ee National Velvet won the Canadian Film Weekly poll in 1945. Gregory Peck won the Australian boxoffice star poll, followed by Greer Garson, Ingrid Bergman, James Mason, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Jennifer Jones, Gene Tierney and’ Bette Davis. Margaret Lockwood and Stewart Granger were tied for tenth place. In 1945 Bing Crosby won our poll. The fact that Australia has a quota favoring British films may have something to do with such films and their stars having won a place in the selections. There is no such quota in Canada. Yes sir, the Australian film fellow has plenty of national spirit and enterprise from an industry standpoint. The Film Weekly’s chronology of Australian film production begins in 1903 and ends with “The Overlanders” in 1946. Once again it is possible that the proximity of Hollywood and its product has something to do with hindering what should be a Canadian enterprise of scope, film production. It makes a Canadian wonder what Canada gets in return for the things she gives up to our large cousin across the line. kK tk * Heard Hereabouts Walter Blondell, Imperial assistant manager, won a $50 suit on the Sheriff’s Fun Parade radio program . . . Mark Burman leaves Toronto for Montreal as UA booker. . . I was somewhat startled when an envelope from the WPTB carried a sticker reading “Paper is a Munition of War’... Stan Gosnell of the Uptown lent his fraternal assistance to Jack Clarke of Loew’s Yonge Street when the latter's house was special-preeming “The Beginning of the End,” for the most part a very interesting Neth . . Georgie Altman is still out BC way with his “Mom and Dad” saga about the unromantic side of romance... Frank Morriss did a very interesting summary of movie pests in his Winnipeg Free Press column, “Here, There and Hollywood”... According to Richard G. Hubler in the new mag, ’47, only one director, the Toronto-born Allan Dwan, has worked continuously in motion pictures from 1909 to 1947. He has made more than 1250 pictures and these have earned more than $500,000,000 at the boxoffice. His salary rose from $50 a week to a flat $1,000,000 per yeal: