Canadian Film Weekly (Nov 3, 1954)

" Wh November 3, 1954 $10,000 TO VV (Continued from Page 1) iron-clad rule by presenting a commercial film on their screens. The film, a single reel short subject sponsored by the Imperial Oil Company, will be shown on the screens of their theatres and Imperial Oil Company in return will send a cheque for $10,000, to the Heart Fund of Variety. Every cent in the Heart Fund of Variety is devoted to the operation and maintenance of Variety Village. The film, which has been produced in Eastman color by the Rapid Grip & Batten studios in Toronto, will feature the singers and dancers from Trinidad who were one of the big hits at this year’s Canadian National Exhibition. They sang and danced to the accompaniment of tuned drums made from empty Esso oil drums. The members of the Esso Steel Band recorded their music just before their return home. Fitzgibbons announced that his company would present’ the commercial short subject in its theatres to aid the Heart Fund of Variety, which is in need of assistance. Usually a theatrical benefit performance provides the necessary funds but this year, due to union disputes, such a performance could not be arranged. Fitzgibbons urged: all associates of Famous Players to present the reel as a service to Variety Village. Announcement of Famous Players’ fine gesture brought prolonged applause at the Variety meeting last week, which also learned that the Toronto Transportation Commission, after discussions with former Chief Barker R. W. Bolstad, had donated a used bus to Variety Village and will convert it to meet the problems of its crippled pupils. Ted Doney of the Royal and Ken Davies of the Odeon, representing themselves a _ third Guelph manager, Herb Chapell, presented Dough Guy Dan Krendel with a $505 cheque for Variety Village, the results of the annual pre-Thanksgiving. Sunday evening show. Krendel expressed warm thanks for their effort, noting that it brought the amount of money raised to date through this and similar shows to over $30,000. John Kurk is chairman of the committee to set up the induction dinner and serving with him are Len Bishop, Joe Bermack, and George Alman. It was revealed that the date for the Jack Kent Cooke Appreciation Night will be held on January 25. Elections returned to office ten of the 11 incumbent members of The Crew. The eleventh, elected to fill the place made vacant on the The Crew by the retirement from office of Summerville, is Paul Johnson. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY News Notes CHARLES P. SKOURAS, 65, PASSES One of the motion picture industry’s leading figures, Charles P. Skouras, passed away in Los Angeles last week at the age of 65 after a heart attack. He developed heart trouble several years ago but continued active in his business and maintained the same great devotion to charity and welfare work. Skouras, president of the 466-unit National Theatres, Inc., and the 148-unit Fox West Coast Theatres Corporation, was born in Skourohorian, Greece in 1889 and came to the USA in 1908. He landed in New York and went to St. Louis, where he worked as a busboy, waiter and bartender until he saved enough to bring his younger brothers, Spyros and George, to America. They got into the movie business with the purchase of a nickelodeon, the Olympia. Today Spyros P. Skouras is president of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation and George P. Skouras president of United Artists Theatres. The Olympia grew to a 36-theatre circuit, which the SkKouras boys sold to Warner Bros., with Charles remaining as manager until 1931. Charles Skouras was a leader in many communal efforts, as well as in emergency service organizations, and he was co-founder and first Chief Barker of the Los Angeles tent of the Variety Clubs of America. Also surviving are his widow, Florence; a son, Charles Jr.; two daughters, Mrs. Margi Curti and Mrs. Edith Jungmeyer, and six grandchildren. BERT BROWN BACK TO PUBLICITY A. E. Brown will return to the publicity department of Famous Players on November 1, it was announced by James R. Nairn, director of Public Relations and Advertising. Bert Brown, who had been associated for many years with the department, had recently headed the Remington air conditioning unit of General Theatre Supply Company. In the publicity department Bert Brown’s assignment will be the handling of special off-beat feature films. He will follow through on these pictures by working out special exploitation and advertising campaigns and in many cases personally visiting theatres in the field to help the managers sell these attractions. His first assignment will be the selling of MGM’s Julius Caesar. Bert started as an usher and graduated into the position of assistant manager at the Tivoli, Hamilton, later becoming manager of the Palace theatre there. He was brought into the publicity department to service theatres in Ontario. While at head office he did much to develop the Children’s Film Library and the sale of books of theatre tickets. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and became executive officer of its show, Meet The Navy which toured Canada and the battlefronts of Europe. NEWS OF THEATRE BUILDING Moncton, New Brunswick, will have two new theatres in the future. Franklin & Herschorn, Maritimes’ circuit, has begun demolition work on its site at St. George and Highfield, while Odeon Theatres (Canada) Limited has awarded a contract to Ambrose Wheeler Construction Limited for the erection of a cinema to replace the old Kent, also in St. George. Moncton, with a population of about 28,000, now has two Odeon houses, the Capitol and Empress, and two Famous Players units, the Imperial and Paramount. At present there are 20 standard houses under construction and 27 planned, while the number of drive-ins in work is 25, with nine planned. So far this year 66 new theatres have opened in Canada—24 standard houses and 42 drive-ins. In quite a number of cases the opening of a new theatre means the closing of an old one. The Hunchak Bros. of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, have closed their theatre, the Roxy, and teamed up with E. Scheerschmidt to open a new one, the Lux, which has 306 seats compared with 250 for the old one. Now listed as open is the Tracy, in Tracy, Quebec, which has a population of 6,000. The theatre, with a French-English sevenday policy and 564 seats, is operated by G. Langevin. Opened recently was the Cinema Joliette, M. Gerard Venne's 600-seat house in Jouliette, Quebec, The 16,064-population city has three theatres now, with Venne operating two of them, Page 3 SUNDA Y MOVIES (Continued from Page 1} society group. The spirit of relaxation is greater on a Sunday afternoon or evening than during the other days of the week, which makes the old-time and foreign movies exhibited seem more entertaining than they might ordinarily be. There’s the Sunday show situation in Toronto. Four different organizations have series of exhibitions booked — the Frenchlanguage Cine Society of the University of Toronto, the Film Society of the same institution, the Toronto Film Society and the Realist Film Society. They'll be using the Museum Theatre, in the provincially-supported Museum; the University of Toronto screening room, the Towne Cinema and the Studio Theatre. Showings have already taken place in some of them. Some titles are Marius, Maedchen in Uniform, My University Days, Les Enfants Terribles, Red Badge of Courage, Dumbo, Duck Soup, Ninotchka, Rashoman, Farrebique, Alexander Nevsky, Paisan, an earlier version of The Big Parade, and Foolish Wives. Films of many ages and types will be seen. The Ottawa Film Society has two series — One at the Regent Theatre on Sundays and Two at the National Museum Theatre on Mondays. All showing at the Regent will be on 35 mm. film— the size used in the Toronto standard houses. The Sunday series, made up of ten showings, stretches from October 24 to April 17. Among the Ottawa titles are Anna Christie, Two Cents Worth of Hope, Germany Year Zero, Difficult Years, Western Approaches and some of those mentioned earlier for Toronto. Film Society and other private showings for audiences are growing in Canada and Sunday exhibition of this nature is bound to increase where possible. Considering that many features are shown via TV on Sunday, the ban on other types of exhibition is becoming another of those modern absurdities ~no liquor advertising allowed but it arrives from across the American border through TV or the provincial border in magazines, censorship of movies for theatres while those on TV come right into the living room uninspected, ete., etc., ete. Perhaps there are reasons for such seeming absurdities ~~ but there aren’t any in the absurdity about Sunday sports being okay while movies aren't. Or the one about movies Sunday on TV. Bennett In ‘Robber's Roost' Bruce Bennett will co-star with George Montgomery in the Leonard Goldstein production, Robber’s Roost for United Artists release.