Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 27, 1954)

Page 10 CinemaScope DeLuxe Stereophonic Sound Systems at COMPETITIVE PRICES @ SIMPLEX sound and projection equipment @ BAUSCH & LOMB anamorphic and projection lenses @® WALKER seamless screens Equipment available for immediate delivery GENERAL THEATRE SUPPLY CO. LTD. BRANCHES: Saint John Montreal Toronto Winnipeg Calgary Vancouver Mr. Exhibitor More than 500 Canadian exhibitors are now getting regular revenue from Adfilms each month. Drop us a note and we will have one of our representatives call to explain how the deal works. F. T. Stinson, General Manager Adfilms Limited 77 York Street TORONTO, ONT. EM. 8-8986 Start RKO's ‘Seven Bad Men' Kenneth Tobey will portray a government undercover agent in RKO Radio’s Seven Bad Men. Production of the film started recently. MANAGER WANTED For first class Independent theatre in city within 40 miles of Toronto. This is a_ well-paid opportunity for experienced and aggressive manager. All replies treated confidentially. Box 21 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY 175 Bloor St. E. Toronto 5 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY = wilt NeBOSSIN CBC WILL WRECK its old Jarvis Street buildings and put up a new one that ought to be ready in two years, I hear... J like the Jack Arthur TV show but miss the radio version of Mr. Showbusiness. The songs and reminiscences on the latter was the stuff of dreams, with each listener conjuring his own. It’s hard to do that with TV . . . Comedy is sure a tough assignment on TV—as witness the desperate efforts of that team with a name that sounds like Pepsodent & Aylmer’s . . . Colin Low of the National Film Board, who won Canada the documentary prize at the Venice festival with Corral, would have copped the cartoon category with A Thousand Million Years had it not been for the policy of no more than one prize to one director, according to Lotte H. Eisner in Films in Review .. . George Altman’s Mavety film delivery setup did a magnificent job of getting the film, picked up from stalled trains, through to theatres on the other side of the devastated areas: One caravan was led over dangerous roads by a police escort. Film and theatre people are really making with the at-a-boys. ~ Ae ee WE WERE CUTTING UP a certain social climber who has been broke oftener than a two-cent whistle. This loudmouthed lamebrain got a couple of lucky breaks a while ago that put him in the big dough. It’s a fantastic story, really, and one of these days [ll write it. Anyway, with his limited thinking ability he soon got mixed up and now fancies that he made this money through superior mental power. You can imagine how hard he is to work for or be near now. “Let’s put it this way,” said Frank Strean to the group of late-hour listeners who were laughing at the jerk. “If we bought him at our price and sold him at his, we would make a helluva lot of money!” ANDRE PREFONTAINE and Bill O’Brien of Trans-World lab, Montreal, were in Toronto for a couple of days on the trail of bigger things for T-W. Both nice guys with interesting ideas... Attended my first TV premiere, that of The Plouffe Family, in the Royal York as a guest of the sponsor, Imperial Tobacco. Old pal and ex-editor Al Grossart welcomed the guests for the McKim agency, then called on the Globe & Mail's Bruce West. They followed CBC chief Davidson Dunton. How do you stage a TV premiere? Simple. After the cocktails the guests separate into three gioups, each around a TV set. The program, the first in English by this essentially French-language cast, scored a great victory when it established the characters early and then made you care about what happens to them. It usually takes more than one program to do that .. . Saw Richard Carison the other day. You remember him—he’s the one who isn’t Mel Ferrer . . . So who do you think showed up around here, who? Jack Hirschberg of Paramount in Hollywood, originally a Montrealer. Met him at Christie’s Biscuits’ party for the opening of the Wayne & Shuster TV show. Nice guy. Harry Boyle, CBL director of programs, had an ankle in a cast and many of us at the party kicked in a couple of bucks to the hurricane relief fund for the privilege of writing our names on it. BIRCHCLIFF THEATRE manager Grant Miller has a lobby cutout showing a dozing TV viewer being kicked by a mule, then this verse: “Bill got his kicks/ From fireside flicks/ But now he’s found, by test/ You cannot beat the movie pix/ And the Birchcliff serves °em best.” BLENDING OF EUROPE and America, a fascinating process created by large-scale immigration, can be observed in many ways. The other day I saw a ten-year-old boy who was obviously a recently-arrived German. His shoes were unlike those worn by Canadian kids, and he had on stockings and below-the-knee knickers—what we used to call “apple knockers.” Then came a gun belt with two six-shooters, a Roy Rogers shirt and a cowboy hat! America, the melting pot. October 27, 1954 Short Throws NEW CBC Press and Information representative in the Pacific region will be Reginald Gordon Jessup who replaces W. Gilmour Clark, now studying law at UBC. Jessup first joined the CBC in 1951 as a news writer in the Vancouver newsroom, later becoming an editor. In January of this year he was transferred to the TV news department as assignment editor. Widely experienced in the newspaper profession, Jessup was formerly with the Vancouver Daily Province, the Vancouver News-Herald, the North Shore Press and the Langley Times. J. R. GRAINGER, president of RKO Radio Pictures, said that RKO is not considering selling its backlog of film to television or any other distribution organization. Grainger stated that “RKO has never considered selling these films to anybody nor is RKO negotiating with anybody for their sale.’”’ The company has a backlog of over 800 films. DISTRIBUTION and financing of The Way We Are will be handled by the Distributors Corporation of America through a deal effected by that organization and Robert Aldrich, the producer and director. The film, which will star Joan Crawford, will not be in production until next May since both Crawford and Aldrich have other commitments to meet. ARGUMENT as to whether the USA government should he invited to participate in differences between distributors and exhibitors was very vigorous at the annual meeting of the USA’s National Allied in Milwaukee. Such distribution toppers as Wm. C. Gehring, Wm. F. Rodgers and Charles Boasberg warned against it. Gehring, 20th-Fox executive, was asked what course to take when a stalemate arose and he suggested appeal to the distributor’s top officers. TEN leading publications of the USA film industry were honored at the annual luncheon of the Joint Defence Appeal of the Motion Picture Division and Cinema Lodge of B’nai Brith. Awards were given to the pericdicals for “their contributions to the American ideals of freedom, equal opportunity and fair play.’ The luncheon was part of the industry’s campaign to help the JDA raise New York’s share of the $5,000,000 needed to finance the activities of B’nai Brrith’s American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League. ty