Canadian Film Weekly (Nov 10, 1948)

Page scan 00012 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Nov 10, 1948
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Nov 10, 1948)
Leaf #:
00012
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 21, 2025
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‘NIovember 10, 1948 THE LAST WORD IN THEATRE SERVICE! Finest New Equipment for Dominion Sound Service Inspectors Canadian FILM WEEKLY Realizing the importance of providing its service personnel with the finest test equipment for “tune-ups” and adjustment of Theatre Sound System, Dominion Sound Equipments Limited has recently added to Service Inspectors’ test kits the AS-1600 Oscillator, AS-1800 Service Meter and AS-1900 Decabridge, manufactured by the Altec Service Corporation, New York, Dominion Sound Equipments Limited Head Office: 1620 Notre Dame St. W., Montreal. Branches Dunne, Colman s Film Daily Poll Irene Dunne and Ronald Colman were the two stars who gave the best performances of 1947-48, according toradio, newspaper and magazine reviewers casting their ballots in the seventh annual poll of The Film Daily, New York. Irene Dunne received top votes for her stint in “I Remember Mama” and Colman for ‘‘A Double Life.” Runners-up to Colman included Clifton Webb for his performance in “Sitting Pretty,” Gregory Peck for “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Spencer Tracy for “State of the Union” and Cary Grant for ‘The Bishop’s Wife.” Competing with Miss Dunne were Ingrid Bergman (“Arch of Triumph”), Jennifer Jones (Duel in the Sun’), Rosalind Russell (‘Mourning Becomes Electra’) and Katherine Hepburn (“State of the Union”). The screen play of Twentieth Century-Fox’ ‘“Gentleman’s Agreement,” as written by Moss Hart, was voted the season’s best, with John Huston’s “Treasure of Sierra Madre,” the Al al: bert Maltz-Malvin Wald ‘Naked City,” F. Hugh Herbert’s “Sitting Pretty” and the Jerome Cady-Jay Dratler “Call North side 777” scripts following in that order. Walter Huston was named the best supporting actor with his performance in “Treasure of Sierra Madre,” while distaff honors in that classification went to Celeste Holm for her work in “Gentleman’s Agreement.” The “juvenile” category was headed by Anthony Wagner as the boy Pip in the Britishmade “Great Expectations,” and Mona Freeman as Miriam Wilkins in Paramount’s “Dear Ruth.” Nat | Film Society Has Study Groups Sponsored by the National Film Society ofOttawa, a number of film study groups have been organized in Canadian cities and these will view eight programs of unusual films from various countries. Such famed films as “The Blue Angel,” “Ivan the Terrible,” ‘Potemkin” and “The Plow That Broke the Plains” are scheduled for exhibition, as are Cavalcanti’s “Film and Reality” and ‘History of the Animated Cartoon.” In Toronto the programs will MPT AO Luncheon Photos (Continued from Previous Page) Dave Axler, Premier Operating. Third row, first photo: Mr. Dean, Wheatley; Jack Hunter, Hamilton; Herb Allen, Premier Operating; Morris Stein, Famous Players; Roy Miller, St. Catharines; Anthony Patzaleck, Hamilton; Harland Rankin, Chatham. Second photo: Jim Nairn, Famous Players; Bill Singleton, Associated Screen News; Mervin Goldstone, Selznick Releasing; Paul Firestone, Moving Picture Digest; Ray Lewis, exhibitor, distributor and publisher of the Canadian Moving Picture Digest; J. John Shulman, Toronto; Bob McStay, Variety; and Hye Bossin, Canadian Film Weekly. Fourth row, first picture: F. P. Hannan, Windsor; Menzo Craig, Ridgetown; Sam Merlina, Wiarton; Gary Hogarth, Kingsville; Angus Jewell, Cannington; N. K. and R. B. Flaherty, Beaverton; and Jimmy Merlina, Orangeville. Second picture: Dorothy St. Ed ward, Ted Smith, Art Grover, Bill Collins, George Hall, Percy Smith, Tom Waterfield and Murray Sheriff, all of Toronto, Halifax, Saint John, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver. be shown in the Ontario museum theatre, which has 450 seats, for 2 membership fee of $6.50 by the Toronto Film Study Group. According to the group’s publicity: “The Toronto Film Study Group is a non-profit organization founded to provide laymen and students of the motion picture an opportunity to see, study and enjoy the greatest examples the film medium affords. Its objective is ‘to trace, catalogue, assemble, exhibit and circulate a library of film programmes’ so that the motion picture may be studied and enjoyed as any of the arts is studied and ‘enjoyed’ and to do this with a sense of historical continuity and perspective. It will also donate all surplus funds (and specific donations) to the purchase of prints from the Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute and other sources of the film masterpieces of the world for the Canadian Film Archive; encourage in every possible way the technical and aesthetic study of the motion picture, in practice and = in theory; encourage, with available funds, the cause of private film making; in short, work to promote the idea that the motion picture was and can be an intelligent form of communication,”