Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 27, 1954)

October 27, 1954 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 3 Vol. 19, No. 41 October 27, 1954 HYE BOSSIN, Managing Editor Address all communications— The Managing Editor, CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Canada Entered as Second Class Matter Published by Film Publications of Canada, Limited 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada — Phone WAInut 4-3707 Price $3.00 per year. CSCOPE ANNIV’Y (Continued from Page 1) ed the “devastating effect” of free TV in the USA, causing theatres to close and endangering production. CinemaScope had brought patrons back to the theatre with “greater realism and therefore more audience participation through better depth of picture, color and sound accompaniment, as well as wider storytelling range.” Today 11,000 theatres throughout the world have a total investment in CinemaScope equipment amounting to $85,000,000 and still growing, while 100 productions in that medium are in distribution, production or preparation by Fox and other companies. Gratitude was expressed to the exhibitors of Canada for their part in the rise of CinemaScope and to the producers who adopted it. Congratulatory messages from all parts of the free world on .the anniversary were acknowledged with “heartfelt gratitude’”” and the intention of living up to their spirit. The company’s 1954-55 CinemaScope releases will include A Woman's World, Black Widow, Desiree, There’s No Business Like Show Business, Carmen Jones, Soldier of Fortune, Lord Vanity, White Feather, The Seen here are the judges of Canada’s outstanding annual Showmanship contest, conducted by the Canadian Moving Picture Digest, which provides cash prizes for the winners. The judging, which took place in the Digest offices, followed dinner at the Coq d’Or. Left to right are Hye Bossin, Canadian Film Weekly; FILM FOLK AID FLOOD RELIEF The Motion Picture Theatres Association of Ontario has offered to aid flood relief in any way requested, including special shows and audience collections. Emergency relief was organized immediately and further help is now being developed. Allied Theatres, 19-house Toronto area booking and buying circuit headed by Ben Freedman of Long Branch, held Sunday night midnight shows, with all proceeds to the fund. Distributors provided the films and the staffs gave their services gratis. Elaine Stewart, one of the stars of Brigadoon, who came to Toronto under the auspices of MGM and Loew’s Yonge Street, was mistress of ceremonies for the great open air all-star show on Yonge Street, near College, which marked the reopening of Yonge Street and aided the fund. Under the local direction of Chet Friedman of MGM and Gerry Collins of Loew’s she met the press at dinner and made many other appearances which attracted attention to her presence, including one on the CBC TV telethon em ceed by Wayne & Shuster. The floods, which took many lives in the areas over-run by the swollen waters of the Don and Humber rivers, did little harm to motion picture industry property. Three lab-studio companies, Film Laboratories, Shelly Films and Rapid Grip & Batten, were fairly close to the flooded points but none was affected. Nor were any of the drive-ins and four-wall theatres damaged, except for some fencing and small signs torn off by the hurricane. All drive-ins were closed on the Friday of the hurricane but some resumed business the next night in spite of the rain. Mavety Film Delivery provided fine service under very diffi cult conditions during and after the storm. It undertook the delivery by roundabout routes. of films that would ordinarily be shipped by train, as well as those the company’s trucks usually carry. Racers, Untamed, Prince of Players, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The King and I, Daddy Long Legs, Can Can, Alexander the Great, The Tokyo Story, Katherine, The Enchanted Cup and Queen of Sheba. In addition Fox will release Independent-made productions like The Deep Blue Sea, That Lady and The Oasis. MGM CinemaScope productions are Brigadoon, Ben Hur, Moonfleet and Deep in My Heart; Warners has scheduled A Star Is Born, Moby Dick, The Silver Chalice, Helen of Troy, Land of the Pharohs, Drumbeat = and others; Universal-International lists The Black Shield of Falworth, To Hell and Back, Sign of the Pagan and The _ Spoilers; Columbia productions include The Long Gray Line, Three For the Show and Joseph and His Brethren; Disney will offer 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; and Allied Artists schedule includes The Black Prince. Among the Independent productions due are Todd-A-O’s Oklahoma; Hecht-Lancaster’s The Gabriel Horn through UA, and Leland Hayward’s The Conqueror via RKO. Willie Mays Short RKO-Pathe will shortly release the Willie Mays Sportscope currently nearing completion. The sports short presents all-round coverage of the New York Giant’s batting champion. Judging the Annual Canadian Moving Picture Digest Showmanship Contest Larry Stephens, IFD; Tommy Knight, JARO; Sam Glasier, 20th Century-Fox; Wannie Bo ROOT Tyers, Odeon; Tiff Cooke, Famous Players; Dan Krendel, Famous Players; Clare Appel, Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association; Walter Kennedy, Empire-Universal; Archie Laurie, United Artists; Jim Kardiman, Odeon; and Bud Barker, Famous Players. Our Business bi A Taylor [DEAS pay off! They are more important in merchandising than ever before and that includes movies. At a time when most motor car dealers are practising all kinds of price-cutting gimmicks to sell an overloaded stock of cars, one dealer in California is using his own type of common sense and a lasting approach. He is exploiting his record for the servicing of the cars purchased from him. He pays people one dollar apiece to take a tour through his plant to see how cars are handled and serviced. This he does through arrangements with different local societies and groups, which are always looking for a way to raise money. He tours some 300 people a week in this way and has a waiting list. In five years he has built a very fine and steady business. In selling a service he automatically sells cars. From Kansas comes the story of a group of affiliated grocers who planned and executed a scheme to give one thousand schoolchildren a _ four-day _allexpense tour to St. Louis. The cost per grocer was very small but the amount of extra merchandise sold was quite substantial. Trade and business journals carry this type of story constantly. It proves that, while we like to think of exploitation as a field exclusive to our business, it is not really so. Actually, many of the incentives for better advertising and exploitation are being eliminated from our business by the methods and terms on which pictures are sold. If picture grosses increase, the distributor gets a larger percentage and, conversely, the exhibitor a smaller one. When this happens the exhibitor loses some of his incentive to sell and exploit and, indeed, sometimes defies the picture to do the business promised by the terms demanded by the distributor. Less and. less selling is done at the local level and more dependence is put on the selling of the picture on a pre-release, national level. There is no question but that the producer and_ distributor should receive as many dollars as possible for pictures of boxoffice merit. If such rewards were not possible, they could not begin to to conceive of some of the attractions which are coming up. The point is, however, that the maximum results can only be obtained for both producer and exhibitor if both have a strong incentive: the incentive to get the maximum attendance and gross at the boxoffice. This cannot happen (Continued on Page 4)