Canadian Film Weekly (Feb 2, 1955)

CANADIAN ' til fet / Observanda cA\: LUA 4 ZA 114 4, HAS THE NEB been limping along in its info div? No announcement of a successor to Stan Helleur, who headed it. . TV program | miss the most is Fighting Words. It helped relieve the overdose of drama and song-and-dance shows with interesting, ncn-artificial stimulation. And nothing so different took its place... ASN’s Gordon Sparling and Jack Martin will spend a couple of months in South America on a Massey-Harris film . . . How People Talk: At the Simpson’s Homemaker theatre, where Alex Barris and Ken Watts interview celebs such as Libby Morris, Bruce West and Len Bishop, | heard a lady say: “How do I feel? If I felt any better I’d be afraid.” And in the lobby of the Crest, where there was a very enjoyable Twelfth Night to be seen, one man excused himself to the other by nodding toward the “Gentlemen” sign and saying: “I think I'll take the benefit of the doubt” .. . There’s no truth to the story that State Fair, about a prize boar, will be retitled Pig o’ My Heart ... Liberty’s February issue is the “TV in Canada” one... Another barber by appointment, I’m told, is Ottawa’s Louis Pulciani, for whose haircut Karsh will wait until he gets back from the other side of the world . . . Sydney Banks, top director and production exec, quit International Productions, a Red Foster division. THAT 21 PER CENT DROP in the Ontario BO since 1951 would be even greater if it hadn’t been for the quarter-million or so immigrants, few of whom have TV sets . . . Frank Rasky, editor of Liberty, talks to a Downtown Businessmen’s Association luncheon about showmanship in business on February 2 . . . Bernard Dube writing Tviewing in The Montreal Gazette . . . George Spelvin, traditional anonymite, describes those who write three-dot columns like this one as “the magpies, mynas and parakeets of journalism” in Theatre Arts. (About that “anonymite”— if there’s no such word, there ought to be) . . . J hear Len Peterson has written a CBC rib on the Stratford Festival, this one being about a group that founds a Folies Bergere, Can-can and all, in Paris, Ontario . . . A man phoned his business partner in Miami to tell him that their safe had been robbed of $30,000. “Don’t be a fool,” said the partner. “Put it back” . . .. Most quoted newspaper in Canada, says the Dominion Press Clipping Bureau, is The Ottawa Journal. The Toronto Telegram, fifth nationally, is six ahead of The Globe and Mail and nine ahead of The Star . . . Harold Bishop’s recipe for a Cubalebowitz: Manischewitz wine and coke. TWO FELLOWS were beefing about the state of the world and the conditions of life. “Atom and hydrogen bombs, plane crashes, taxes, juvenile delinquency, nervous breakdowns, graft—what a world,” one said, the other nodding a vigorous endorsement. “The lucky persons are those who aren’t even born yet.” “That’s right,” said the other, “and you know how many of them there are!” SHYSTER SNEAKED in among those lawyers recently allowed to hang “‘Queen’s Counsel” on their handles. It’s usually referred to as a “QC” and a fellow was referring to it that way in telling his friends about the shyster’s undeserved luck. An American in the group, overhearing, asked what “QC” meant and was told: “In this case, Quack” . . . That English comedian, Gerald Peters, for Frigidaire on CBC TV, told a story about a little girl who was scared into neatness because “she read in the papers that a woman had been jailed for keeping a Disorderly House”... My nine-year-___ old nephew, Bobby Bossin, addressed his mother the other morning: “Mom, do you think you’re bringing me up right? You always make me go to bed when I’m feeling very good and wake me up when I’m feeling very tired” . . . Follow-up on that Variety all-star air junket, suggested by the Duke of Edinburgh, has Mike Connolly reporting that Churchill and Eisenhower may be at the International convention in Hollywood, where I presume it ends. Right “new they’re having trouble getting anyone to pick up the $250,000 ‘tab for the plane city-to-city tour, Las Vegas having backed away. ~ _ Even if it’s only a dream, you must admit it’s a pretty good dream. FILM WEEKLY F -< Br =F | a February 2, 1955 nth SQUARE PREMIER LESLIE FROST of Ontario, who has his troubles at the moment, should appreciate this printed comment by a highly regarded gentleman: “Some of the good people of Ontario have complained in my hearing of faults and fraudulences, commissive and omissive, on the part of the government, but I guess said people have reason to bless their stars for the general fairness, economy, wisdom and liberality of their officers and administration.” Unfortunately that was written before the present administration—but it may still have application. That 1880 opinion was by an American visitor named Walt Whitman, whose personally-published book, Leaves of Grass, captured the spirit of America. The poems, in form and content reflecting the inaividuality and endless energy of the new countries, got a poor reception but their issuance in 1855 is now being celebrated widely. Whitman had a great appreciation of Canada. The Columbia Encyclopedia notes that the poet was briefly editor of a Long Island paper in 1839, then “For the next few years he made long tours on foot in the West and into Canada; as a result of which a vision of the immensity. of America and the dignity of the individual man in a democracy took possession of him.” é The Canadian notes in the traveler's notebooks and diaries were edited by William Sloane Kennedy as Walt Whitman’s Diary in Canada, a book published in 1904 by the University Press, Cambridge. The book draws on notes made during the time he spent visiting his physician, friend and later literary executor, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke of London, Ontario, who first came to know Whitman’s work through a Montreal mineralogist, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt. The book has a photo of Whitman made by the Edy Brothers of London on September 22, 1880. In midsummer of 1880 Whitman joined Dr. Bucke in London He Liked Us and together they went on a trip down the St. Lawrence and up the Saguenay, passing through or stopping off in many places. Whitman observed that “Hamilton is a busy city,” Toronto had “Long and elegant streets of semi-rural residences, many of them very costly and beautiful,” Kingston was “‘a pretty town” and Montreal, with 150,000 people, “as picturesque appearing a city as there is on earth.” Torontonians of today know just how Whitman felt when— on July 27, 1880—he made this entry: “I write this in Toronto aboard the steamship the Algerian two o’clock p.m. We are presently off. The boat from Lewiston, New York, has just come in; the usual hurry with passengers and freight, and as I write, I hear the pilot’s bells, the thud of hawsers unloosened, and feel the boat squirming slowly from her ties out into freedom. We are off into Toronto Bay (soon the wide expanse and cool breezes of Lake Ontario). As we steam out a mile or so we get a pretty view of Toronto from the blue foreground of the waters, — the whole rising spread of the city, groupings of roofs, spires, trees, hills in the background. Goodbye, Toronto, with your memories of a very lively and agreeable visit.” His feeling for Canada, which he noted was equal to the whole of Europe in its 3,500,000 square miles, is given in the notes headed “For lecture—for conclusion—.” He calls ours “A grand, sane temperate land” which is “the heme of an improved grand race of men and women; not of some select class, but larger, saner masses. I should say that this vast area . . . was fitted to be their unsurpassed habitat. “T_know nothing finer. The European democratic tourist, philenthropist, geographer, or genuine enquirer, will make a fatal mistake who leaves these shores without understanding this.—I know nothing finer, either from the point of view of the sociologist, the traveller, or the artist, than a month’s-devotion. to the even surface of Canada... Mien, Te ee ‘ “T see, or I imagine I see in the future, a race of two million farm-families, ten million people—every farm running down to the water [the St. Lawrence], or at least in. sight of it—the best air and drink and scenery of the globe, the sure foundation— nutriment of heroic men and women.” :-::: 2:90 0. 3 The world has come to recognize that the Canada of today, -in many ways, corresponds to or betters‘Whitman’s vision of more. than three-quarters of a century ago. “* ©