Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 22, 1948)

Page 46 Trade Tales When Spyros Skouras was in Canada recently he told how much help from this coumtry had meant for the Greeks during the war. He headed the American committee for the relief of Greece. To organize it five important Americans of Greek extraction met. One of them was a mild-looking fellow who stood apart before the meeting started. Skourag came to this continent when he was 14 years old, so he understands the shyness of persons who have difficulty with the English language. He suspected that this was what bothered his lonely-looking compatriot. He spoke to him. “Would you rather speak Greek,” Skouras asked, “or would English be all right?” | “I imagine my English will do,” was the answer. ‘You see, I teach it at Harvard.” The story of Ambrose Small has become part of Canadian show lore and the late Hector Charlesworth devoted much space to it in his “Candid Chronicles,” which were published by the MacMillan Co. Small disappeared in 1919 after selling the Grand Opera House in Toronto and his other theatre holdings to TransCanada, which was afterwards purchased by the late N. L. Nathanson’s group. Small was thoroughly disliked in the theatre business. An American manager, John C. Fisher, had come to the conclusion that Small was short-changing him of the share of receipts due for engagements of his companies. He got no answer to his mailed or wired complaints so, angry, he boarded a train fer Toronto. Fisher’s aim was to surprise Small and tell him off — but good. He had never been in this country. Arriving in Toronto, which he thought was a small town, he instructed the driver to take him to “the theatre.’”’ The driver took him to the Princess instead of the Grand and, excited, Fisher didn’t notice the mistake. He rushed right into the manager’s office and began a violent denunciation of Small. The manager of the Princess was O. B. Sheppard, a man who had good reason to hate Small. Sheppard had been manager of the Grand and Small one of the employees. He had fired Small, who prospered until he purchased the Grand and discharged Sheppard. So Sheppard listened genially while Fisher called Small a liar, thief and scoundrel. Nor did he point out that it was a case of mistaken identity. “Mr. Fisher, I have heard of you and I am glad to meet you,” Sheppard said when Fisher stopped. “I may be a damned liar and a damned thief, but you insult me, sir, when you call me Ambrose J. Small.” Stars who antagonize interviewers on occasion, such as Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth did during the past couple of years, eventually get the worst of things. There was a time when one got it right back then and there, according to an anecdote in “The Player” of 1910. Interviews were regarded as irksome by Mrs. Patrick Campbell and she made this obvious. During one of her American visits she kept New York reporters waiting outside her hotel suite for a long time, then had them admitted en masse. They found her draped languid!y in an appropriate chair. “Really, I can’t see why you come to—er—see me,’ she drawled in a bored tone. “Is it because you are sent here to earn your living in this quaint way or is it because you are interested in me?” The reporters looked helplessly at each other, startled into silence by the lady’s gall. Finally one leaned forward confidentially. ‘ : ‘Pll tell you Mrs. Campbell, why we came here,” he said. ‘It?s because you amuse us §0.” In that polite age a reply like that was enough to make Mrs. Pat behave for the rest of the interview. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY An The Brief Yarns SQUARE Douglass Montgomery, writing in “The Cinema Studio” of London, discusses the comparative merits of American and British films. Or rather, he makes a point of avoiding that. It seems that he was given the space for that purpose but eased his way out of an argument. He tells the reader that “we Canadians flatter ourselves that we sit on a high fence and enjoy what might be termed The DOUBLE-View. We think, on any topic with an Anglo-American angle, that we’re great Appreciators and Understanders of Both Sides.” Explaining that “I’m just half a Canuck and half a Yank living, happily, in ‘Limey-Land’,” Montgomery then asks: “Don’t we all spend too much time comparing activities in our separate countries anyway? Especially when our countries should never again feel so separate. The pastime is becoming especially irresistable in the case of films. Why? We don’t compare the best French wines with the best English beers. Because, obviously, the only similarity attempted is that they’re both liquids. So why compare good English tea with good American coffee? They aren’t trying to be the same drink.” This attitude, he states, should be extended to the making of films. Denham and Hollywood fall down every time they try to ape each other. Montgomery, born in Brantford, Ontario, served as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army. A star of films on both sides of the Atlantic, his latest is the British production, “A Lady Must Die.” There are rumors that a certain hoodlum who retired from rackets years ago and moved into a fashionable district with his family has rejoined the hard members of the Easy Dollar Club. That is the fear of his snooty neighbors, who still know him mainly by his old reputation. But he hasn’t. You see, he wanted his young son to take violin lessons. The boy wouldn’t unless daddy did. So daddy bought a violin too and goes through the motions while junior is being taught. A couple of times a week daddy walks out of the house with his violin case hanging from his fingers and that’s what started the stories. You’ll remember that the mobsters used to carry their Tommy guns in violin cases in the 20s. Quite a dandy was Jacques Offenbach, composer of “Tales of Hoffman.” In his “They All Had Glamour,” (Julian Messner, NY) the late Edward B. Marks offered an anecdote about Offenbach. The composer’s apparel was usually made up of items of different colors. Red, yellow, blue, green and other hues reached out from his person at the same time. Once, attired in that way, he entered a store to purchase a purple tie. “Do you think,” he asked with sudden misgiving, “that it will clash with the rest of my outfit?” “Oh, yes,” was the clerk’s sale-saving answer, “it will clash beautifully.” In “The Nineteen Hundreds” Reginald Aiberon wrote that “the average actor knows precious little about any play beyond the one in which he happens to be appearing at the moment, and precious little about any part in it except his own.” Auberon claimed that he once asked an actor to describe the plot of “Hamlet.” “I don’t know it,” the actor said. “I have only played Polonius.” Christmas Number