Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 26, 1949)

Page scan 00010 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Oct 26, 1949
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 26, 1949)
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 21, 2025
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

October 26, 1949 Film Arts Groups Prep For Season Two film art groups are offering programs of classics this season — the Toronto branch of the National Film Society, formerly the Toronto Film Study Group, and Caligari Films. The National Film Society will offer nine showings at the Royal Ontario Museum, while the Caligari group will make its presentations in co-operation with the YMHA. This is the second season for the Society group and its program is based on last season’s questionnaire. The following 16 and 35 mm. sound and silent films from various countries are scheduled: Cocteau’s Beauty and_ the Beast, Murnau’s Sunrise, Duvivier’s Un Carnet du Bal, Flaherty’s Moana, Smart’s Bush Christmas, Griffith’s Intolerance, Epstein’s Fall of the House of Usher. Also Monkey into Man, Rodin, Rain, Ballet Mechanique and Song of Ceylon. Others being negotiated for are Blood of a Poet, Zero de Conduite, L’Atlante and Le Million. Volpone, Farrebique and Harvest may also be available. Caligari Films, along with some new experimental films, will present Dovzhenko’s Arsenal, Von Stroheim’s Greed, Murnau’s Last Laugh, WBisenstein’s Ten Days That Shook the World, Ruttman’s Berlin and Grierson’s Granton Trawler. Also what it calls its Avante Garde Program, which consists of Dulac’s Smiling Madame Beudet, Clair Entr’acte, Leger’s Ballet Mechanique and Kersanoff’s Menilmontant. Attendance to both is by subscription for the series. Miss Moira Armour, 39 Rosehill Avenue, Toronto, is the treasurer of the National Film Society, Toronto Branch, while the address of Caligari Films is 464 Markham Street, Toronto. The Society’s program started on October 17 and that of Caligari October 24. Para Names Stars Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters will star in Paramount’s film based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. King Bros. Retitle Pic King Brothers have renamed Gun Crazy, which stars John Dall and Peggy Cumniins, and it will be released by United Artists as Deadly Is the Female. "No Way Out’ Cast Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark and Negro actors Sidney Poitier and Dots Johnson will head the cast of 20th CenturyFox’ second film on the Negro problem, No Way Out, Canadian FILM WEEKLY Television in bars will be fought by temperance leaders when video comes to Australia on the grounds that it attracts more people to drink. Mobile TV crew of Famous Players will televise the dinnerdance of the annual Ottawa Press Club Ball, J. J. Fitzgibbons, head of Famous Players, has promised. Arrangements are also under way for medical viewing of operative technique on a FP closed circuit within a month in Toronto. Decline in reading is blamed on television, as well as movies and radio, by Dr. C. C. Goldring, Toronto’s director of education, in a speech at a meeting of the Association of Teachers of English. He said that the reason for it was that these mediums of entertainment did not require the amount of concentration that reading books did and expects the decline to become still greater in the future. Coin-operated TV machines may soon make their appearance ; in Toronto. Deal is being negotiated now. Return tabled in the House of Commons gave the number of employees with the CBC as 1,323 including 191 in its international service. Salaries of personnel were not given on the grounds that it would “not be in the public interest,” but gave A. D. Dunton’s, which was $15,000, and Dr. Augustin Frigon’s, which was $13,750. A resolution recommending that the CBC be “turned over to private enterprise” was presented at the recent 29th convention of the Alberta Federation of Labor, which represents 14,200 members. It also recommends that there be no increase in the radio license fee as it would “create a hardship” and claims that “most of the programs sponsored by the CBC are only unbearable noises to most working people.” Experience and knowledge accumulated by film technicians in the field of lighting and photography will be eagerly sought after by television, if and when the USA Federal Communications Commission approves color TV. This belief, held by many, is based upon the certainty that video will seek to avoid as many of the costly errors natural to beginners as possible. Evidence of this can be found in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers selecting color photography as the key topic at its forthcoming convention. Paul Raibourn, Paramount V-P, was elected permanent chairmant of the television committee of the Motion Picture Association of America at a recent meeting at which the main subject of discussion was effective yardsticks for gauging the impact of television on the motion picture industry. Surveys made in the TV field were evaluated by the committee as background for continuing study. EX-NFB MAN HEADS USA PROJECT Robert Anderson, whose three psychiatric films, Feeling of Rejection, Feeling of Hostility and The Drug Addict, produced for the National Film Board, attracted international attention, has been named film officer of the recently-organized Mental Health Film Board of the USA National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Aim of the board is to produce pictures to combat “widespread misunderstanding, superstition and misconceptions about mental health.” Initial budget is $250,000 and Anderson stated that seven film will be in production before Christmas. FILMAKERS, INC. SIGNS WITH RKO Filmakers, Incorporated, the Collier Young-Ida Lupino production outfit whose first film, Not Wanted, is doing exceptional business, has signed a contract to produce three big exploitation pictures for world-wide distribution by RKO. Filmakers will shortly move its entire unit to the RKO lot. Not Wanted is being released by Film Classics in the USA and by Astral Films in Canada. The company’s current production, Never Fear, is not included in the RKO deal. Subject matter of the three films has been agreed upon and two are in preparation. Page 11 Philly Exhibs In Priority Suit Seven of the USA’s largest motion picture producing and distributing companies are being sued for $1,800,000 under that country’s Federal anti-trust laws. The suit, filed in United States District Court of Philadelphia by the Mayfair Theatre, charged that the companies had illegally discriminated against Mayfair for the last six years in the distribution of films. The plaintiffs, Louis Sablosky, his wife, Sadie, Marion Fox and Myrtle Singer, contend that the companies “conspired to favor’ three other theatres in the neighborhood by releasing feature pictures to them from one to two weeks ahead of the Mayfair. They estimate losses and damages at $600,000 and seek treble damages under the terms of the Clayton law. Defendants in the suit are The Paramount Film Distributing Corporation; RKO-Radio Pictures, Inc.; Warner Brothers Pictures Distributing Corporation; Columbia Pictures Corporation; Universal Film Exchanges, Inc.; the United Artists Corporation; and Loew’s, Inc. Viveca Lindfors Set Viveca Lindfors has been signed for the second feminine lead in Columbia’s Margaret Sullavan starrer, No Sad Songs for Me. "Love That Brute’ Love That Brute is the final title for Fox’ Paul Douglas-Jean Peters-Cesar Romero starrer known in work as Turned Up Toes. New Bogeaus Picture Benerict Bogeaus has signed Dolores Moran and Wayne Morris for the leads in his forthcoming film, Early Autumn. RKO's "Come To Me’ Farley Grainger and Joan Evans will star in Samuel Goldwyn’s Come To Me, which will be filmed in Italy and released by RKO. Bette Davis Signs eo One-Picture Deal Bette Davis has signed with Jack Skirball and Bruce Manning to star in This Day is Ours, Arthur Caesar screen. story which RKO will release. Curtis Bernhardt has been engaged to direct as one of the terms of the deal. Film will be Miss Davis’ first since her recent departure from Warner's, where she has been under contract for 18 years. In that time she had only made two pictures away from Warners.