Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 2, 1947)

Page scan 00010 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Apr 2, 1947
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 2, 1947)
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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| THE PICK OF THE PICTURES REVIEWS INFORMATION RATINGS ace a a Te SN aaa amma Vol. 12, No. 14 Beat The Band with Frances Langford, Ralph Edwards RKO 67 Mins. ENTERTAINING OFFERING PLAY ED WITH SKILL HAS GOOD SELLING POINTS. This has good selling points in Frances Langford’s singing and some orchestral pyrotechnics by Gene Krupa and his band. The usual boy-girl angles are worked, also hidden identities which are ironed out in good time. It is played with skill. The scenario is based on a play of the same name by George Abbott. John Auer’s direction maintains the light romantic touch. Discharged from the Army, Philip Terry wants to start up his swing band again. Ralph Edwards is his agent. Andrew Tombes played the contact man. The two have been squandering the band’s money on horses which never paid off. There’s $3,000 left in the kitty. It is to pay for Miss Langford’s singing tuition. Terry meets Miss Langford en route to New York from IDllinois on a train. Their meeting is not quite what it might have been. He meets her again in New York, having flown there for that purpose on advice from Edwards. Passing himself off as a “professor” of music, Terry tells her June Clayworth, actually Edward’s wife, is his spouse and puts her through a regime of calisthenics to prepare her phy _ Sieally for vocal training. Quite inadvertently Miss Langford learns what is up from Mabel, Terry house-keeper, They all live together, it seems. Miss Langford applies for an audition with Terry’s band. She is signed. Later the truth comes out and assisted by Gene Krupa’s voluntary contribution of his band’s services at the hotel opening, which takes place in the boiler room, the farcical piece concludes on a proper successful, romantic note. CAST: Frances Langford, Ralph Ed wards, Philip Terry, June Clayworth, Mabel Paige, Andrew Tombes. 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Miss Day divorces him and returns to this country to marry Gene Raymond. This event is about to take place when Aherne comes visiting to reveal Miss Day’s case to Raymond. That’s how it begins and the story telescopes to the final conclusion . when Miss Day collapses after the elements of her juvenile affliction are accidentally introduced. She is led away to a hospital. CAST: Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, Robert Mitchum, Gene Raymond, Sharyn Moffett, Ricardo Cortez, Henry Stephens0n. CREDITS: Producer, Bert Granet; Director, John Brahm; Story by Sheridan Gibney; Cameraman, Nick Musuraca. DIRECTION, Good, PHOTOGRAPHY, Good, Johnny 0’Clock with Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes Columbia 95 Mins. TENSE DRAMA ABOUT A TOUGH GUY PACKS SOLID ENTERTAINMENT; SHOULD DO WELL FOR ITSELF. Resolving itself into a tense drama soon after it gets under way, “Johnny O’Clock” is a good study of a tough guy who thinks he knows all the answers. It is also a story of hunter and hunted —police variety. Intermingled are a couple of murders, and the lead character almost gets knocked off in a gangland ambush. Pretty girls drape themselves about the sets. Dick Powell in the title role ably does the job and in this latest performance will solidly weld his new forte. Miss Keyes is quite proper and intense as his new love while Miss Ellen Drew carries the torch throughout for Powell and at length it burns out. She has some good acting moments and they click. Lee J. Cobb is aptly cast as a detective inspector who is relentless in his _ pursuit of people he knows very well to be of the criminal strata and with him it is a matter of matching wit and instinct. Powell and Thomas Gomez are partners in a gambling joint. Jim Bannon, a cop, after having’ an affair with Nina Foch, a hatcheck girl, is knocked off. That’s the whodunit element. Miss Foch is also found dead. It looks like suicide, investigation proves it murder. Miss Keyes, Miss Foch’s sister, comes on the scene and meets up with Powell. Events and clues point to the incrimination of Gomez. And the triangle element of Drew-Powell-Gomez brews new mischief, Gomez plans to have Powell knocked off. Powell eludes the ambush and returns to his apartment to get some basic truths out of John Kellogg. He decides to’ quit the racket. At the establishment he coldly breaks off with Gomez and in an exchange of shots in wounded. Miss Keyes is about. So is Cobb. The murder mess appears to be cleared up and there is an indication that Cobb will soften up in his charges. CAST: Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes, Lee J. Cobb, Ellen Drew, Nina Foch, Thomas Gomez, John Kellogg, Jim Bannon, CREDITS: Producer, Edward G. Nealis; Director, Robert Rossen; Screenplay by Robert Rossen; Original story, Milton Holmes; Cameraman, Burnett Guffey. DIRECTION, Very Good. PHOTOGRAPHY, Good, $2.00 Per Annum I See a Dark Stranger with Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard Eagle-Lion 98 Mins. MELODRAMATIC COMEDY; MISS KERR FINE; SHOULD EFFECTIVELY FILL THE BILL. The airy treatment of a serious underlying plot given in “I See a Dark Stranger” manages to come off well and supplies lightly handled romance compounded with elements of melodrama. Miss Kerr is very effective as a young Irish girl and she maintains her blarney skillfully throughout the proceedings. Whether or not the British are having fun and playing at being sardonic in their treatment of their relatives across the Irish Sea is a fact not to be arrived at here for they certainly show up the Irish to be still telling bragging stories of the Rebellion and, in the person of Miss Kerr, they have an inspiring candidate for Nazi espionage who almost gives the D-Day invasion show away. Miss Kerr on reaching her 21st birthday leaves home, journeys to Dublin. There she tries to join the IRA which was dissolved in the ’20’s. However, she is picked ._ up by a German agent and her sincere hatred of the English gets her a berth with the group in Devon. The Nazis plan to spring a spy who has been captured and incarcerated in a nearby military prison, prior to execution. Miss Kerr figures in the “break” by taking Trevor Howard on a day’s outing. He’s a British officer thought to be with intelligence. The prisoner gets off, is killed. His contacting agent is mortally wounded. Miss Kerr’s last job is to dispose of the Nazi’s body and get to the Isle of Man where she locates plans for the invasion. Wanted by both the Germans and the British she is kidnapped and brought with Howard to Hire. They get involved in a “funeral” which turns out to be black marketeers smuggling alarm clocks and whiskey. However, the invasion plans were burned before the trip and Howard and Miss Kerr are last seen married. CAST: Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard. Raymond Huntley, Norman Shelley, Michael Howard, Liam Redmond. CREDITS: Producer, Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat; Director, Frank Launder; Written by Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, Wolfgang Wilhelm; Cameraman, Wilkie Cooper. DIRECTION, Good. PHOTOGRAPHY, © Good.