Canadian Film Weekly (Jan 4, 1956)

January 4, 1956 Poge 5 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Observanda Typographs S vill NESOSSIN || FADING FANCIES: The attic. The new houses don’t have them. Poking around a cellar storeroom isn’t the same. Thought of that when I read Gerald Stevens’ small book evaluating Canadi‘ana of various kinds, In a Canadian Attic. Read it . . . Where Science Fails: We need something that can silence a telephone bell on this end while the sound of it ringing is carried on the other. Most people take the phone off the hook when they lie down or want to be out to phoners. But the phoners, getting a busy signal, go crazy trying to get the line. With no answer to ringing they’d hang up, go about their business, and try later . . . Do you remember when hatcheck joints had a dime on the plate as a hint instead of a quarter? . . . Jerk Insurance: There are sO many sneakouts in local nightclubs that waiters, who are stuck with the cheque whenever that happens, are forming a pool in their union to make up at least half the loss . . . Anyone around here with that French-made two-reeler in Eastman color of Marcel Marceau? Id like to see it... Overheard: “It was a quiet party. Not one guest was carried out—horizontally” ... The most difficult thing to find? Unbroken reading time. THIS MAN HAD piles of bright, new pennies in his house, Walter Manley of Republic Pictures said, and a friend asked where they came from. “I make them myself,” was the reply. The friend admired their genuine look and wanted to know how much they cost to make. “A cent and a half each,” he was told. The friend scratched his head, then asked how you could show a profit that way. Answered the penny maker: “I falsify my books”... Harry Boyle, CBC exec, just sold his play, The Gallant Greenhorn, for semi-musical production by a group in which Jack Goldberg, who talked up interest in using the CNE as a studio about a decade ago, is a partner . . . The overall title of the sex-habit survey material gathered abroad by Kinsey could be called, a reader suggests, Somewhere a Vice is Calling . . . Local scene brightened by the presence of one of the Show Biz Kusells, this one Bud, who is production manager for Guthrie’s NY-bound stage spectacular, Tamburlaine, a Stratford enterprise guided by Robert Whitehead . . . Newell Rogers of the London Daily Mail has Jim Cooper’s desk in the Globe and Mail office and Jim now has the one Rog occupied in NY for DM. Jim will be missed. LADY NEIGHBOR arrived at a wake and after conveying her condolences to the widow, said: “I never saw that. Grandfather Clock before. When did you get it?” The widow said she owned no Grandfather Clock, whereupon the neighbor pointed to an object in one of the corners. The widow looked. “That’s not a Grandfather Clock,” she explained. “That’s the deceased, bless him. Shure and we stood him on end to make room for the mourners.” VERY GOOD LUCK to the Sunday night Studio showings of the new film society, A-G-E. It’s named for its founders, Aldo Maggiorotti, Gerald Pratley and Elwood Glover. Want to join for the season opening on January 15 with Don Q and Son of Zorro? Send $5 for single membership or $8 for double to 448 Davisville Avenue, Toronto 7... To Stephen York: As I explained, Everything Seemed Charming is not a published book. Thanks for offering to buy one . . . That last item makes me bold enough to make a wish. It’s that some daring publisher would print a pocket book of selections from here. My title for it: The Horse With the Gold Tooth. That phrase is a sucker steer used by touts, who begin a conversation with a stranger by asking if he has ever seen one... Can 1 ask two favors of certain people at the New Year? 1, Would switchboard girls stop referring everybody and anybody who calls up for any kind of information to this office automatically? 2. Please, stop taking Film Weekly out of its wrapper if it isn’t intended for you. Borrow it after the person it is intended for reads it, not before. So many don’t seem to get back to the wrapper or reach the addressee, who calls here and wants to know where his paper is. we ALL-TIME ALL-STAR Mixed Doubles in skating: Stewart Reburn and Sonja Henie. That’s how Skippy Baxter, the veteran star of the Hollywood Ice Revue, picked them for Gene Kessler of the Chicago Sun-Times. Stew, who skated with Sonja on the road and in Fox’ Second Fiddle, has been Toronto chief for Crawley Films for eight years . . . Fine short short story, The Seven Happy Gods, in the current Collier's by the one-man writing-photog team for Weekend, Jock Carroll . . . Don Harron’s performance on U.S. Steel’s TV show, which he shared with Joan Blondell and Audrey Christie, Fox starlet, got him a flicker of interest from Warners. They’re suckers if they don’t grab this lad, whose theatrical training can be matched by very few young fellows . . . Helen of Troy will get the Hamilton-Buffalo TV boosting that was so effective with Ulysses. Jim Nairn couldn’t buy Toronto time for Famous Players . . . Lorne Greene and family will go to Britain, where he’ll make 22 more TV plays and accept other engagements until August, when he’s due in NY for rehearsals of the play to be produced by Billy Rose, of which the femme lead is Claire Bloom. Eros, the UK distributor, has just stitched two of Greene’s TV shorts into a feature now playing theatres. HERE’S A YARN for my photog friends, those fearless fellows who shoot on sight. Two still-photogs were talking. “This morning,” said one, “I passed through the park and saw a sight that would break your heart. On a bench sat a very old lady, in rags and hungry, but with the proud and patient look on her once-beautiful face of one who had once known wealth, security and love. Yet there she sat—cold, hungry and desperate.” He wiped away a tear. “That's terrible,” said his friend. “What did you give her?” “Well, it was a sunny day,” was the answer, “so I gave her f-11 at 1-100.” MOST PEOPLE ARE curious about writers. Why not? Writers are curious persons—in every meaning of the word. The Oxford Dictionary defines curious as (1) “eager to learn, inquisitive, prying,” (2) “minutely careful, accurate, solicitous, subtle,” then explains parenthetically that this definition is a “literary” one, and (3) “stirring curiosity, puzzling, inviting attention, strange, odd.” Most writers are quite conscious of the third meaning. A good many people think of them as fancy bums with intellectual pretensions to whom God, somewhat unfairly, gave a magic talent that enables them to get by without working. To the young writer, challenging the unknown within himself in isolation and nearpoverty, this is heartbreaking. The older writer has developed an imperturbability to that attitude that is good for him but provokes his critics even more. What are writers really like? I’d say that a description of them by Donald Hough, quoted in The New York Times some years ago from his book, Snow Above Town, published by Horton, will give you a pretty good idea: “A writer must work alone; he must forego occupational gregariousness with others of his trade. His first job is to reflect something of the life by which he is surrounded and of which he is a part. This eliminates other writers as neighbors; a writer ought to be surrounded by normal people living a normal life, and writers are not normal people and they live a ridiculous life. They do not live, they pose; they walk on a perpetual stage, taking all parts but their own, working up a sort of protective coloring so they can worm their way into circles from which they hope to extract sustenance. .. . SO a writer ought to be regarded with suspicion, not because he is a spy, not because he seems to be unemployed, but simply because he is a fake. The blood of an actor runs in his veins; at one moment he is a solid, respectable citizen, going to church, and at the next he is slinking furtive-eyed about the streets, taking the part of a thief. He has an ungovernable impulse to participate in everything he sees; he never is content to observe. Since he will go to any lengths to accomplish this, his friendship ought to be looked at narrowly.”