Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 4, 1956)

Observanda PATIENT WAS cracked on the subject of wonder drugs and bugged his ear-weary medico for the very, very latest one. The doc took one out of a box. “This one is so new,” he said, “that we haven’t even got a disease for it yet!” ... The Star now has a promotion manager name o’ Ralph Cowan .. . John Latimer, Torchy Coatsworth’s aide as CBC Film Procurement officer, got out ahead of the latter, who becomes Alex Metcalfe’s aide at MPTV on April 17. Latimer, who'll operate a summer camp near Minden, was succeeded by Dorothy McCallum, but O. C. Wilson hasn't named Torchy’s replacement yet . . . Hugh McKandy of the Globe and Mail sent Portland Hoffa the local editorial tributes about Fred Allen, whom he didn’t know but admired, like the rest of us... One of the things Sydney J. Harris wishes he had known at 18 instead of 38: “That intelligence which is not employed in building character soon feeds on itself and begins to destroy character.” Now he tells me. i THEY ARE GOING to make a picture about James J. Walker, New York’s popular playboy mayor of the 20’s, and he will be played by Bob Hope. Doris Day may play his showgirl sweetheart, Betty Compton of Toronto, whom he met when she was appearing in a 1927 Broadway musical, Okay, of which the stars were Gertrude Lawrence and Victor Moore. Jimmy, a married man, first saw Betty when she was 23 and he was 46 but that was it for both of them. It was a sensation to those who knew of the romance when Betty eloped with another man in February, 1931 under mysterious circumstances that had something to do with an overdose of sleeping pills. The man was Edward J. Dowling, a Paramount dialogue director whom she met when he was sent to coach her for a screen test. She got a Mexican divorce in March. In 1933 Walker, divorced from his first wife, married Betty in Cannes. In 1941 she divorced Walker so that he could return to his faith and find peace of soul. Betty died in 1944 at 40, leaving the two children she and Walker adopted and one by her third husband. Walker passed on in 1946 at 65. There are still those who remember Betty’s life here. One is Jack Arthur, who produced the shows at the Uptown in which she danced under the direction of Leon Leonidoff and Florence Rogge. Another is Stanley Reed Riches, a barrister, who married Betty when she was 18. He was still married to Betty when the mayor fell in love with her. This Riches didn’t like one bit and Betty didn’t seem to care much whether he did or didn’t. He knew there was talk of Walker being investigated for the conduct of his office and the Walker-Compton situation irked Riches into doing a little investigating of his own. The lawyer gathered considerable information that was, to say the very least, unflattering to the mayor. Before he could use the documents to his own satisfaction, his safe was burgled and they disappeared. It was his opinion that they had been stolen by Walker adherents, since at the time the mayor was being investigated publicly by Judge Seabury for his conduct in office. Riches told his story to Ted Farah of Canadian Press, who sent it out to Canadian and American newspapers. Perhaps the extra pressure caused by the Toronto man’s claims was too much for the mayor of New York. He resigned and lived abroad for two years, part of the time as a Hearst writer. Their love-troubled lives will be revived to provide an interesting hour-and-a-half in the movie theatres. Time has made Stanley Riches, now a small-town resident, philosophical about the unhappy entanglement in which he was involved. I CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY V ariviews WHEN BARNEY FOX was in Mexico he saw this word on dozens of boards, shadow boxes and marquees: “Hoy.” He figured that there were proportionately as many Hoy houses in that country as there were Loew ones in the USA and Paramount units here. He made this comment to a Mexican friend. “Hoy,” laughed the Mexican, “means Today in Spanish.” That’s why Barney got a kick out of a very long letter Harland Rankin of Chatham, the exhib with the itchy pen, wrote to Motion Picture Herald about show business in the 6,000 miles of his recent trip. “We also visited the Hoy theatre which is part of a chain in Puerto Rico and which reaches out all over the countryside,” wrote Harland. That reminds me of the guy who saw the words “Max. Load” before some figures on hundreds of trucks. “That guy Max. Load owns about every truck in this town,” he observed. I WAS TEMPTED to put this quotation from Finance Minister Walter Harris in our masthead: “The publication and circulation of magazines by Canadians, for Canadians, telling about Canadians and what they are doing and what they have to sell, seems to us a basic and essential thread in the fabric of our national life.’ Only a prize ignoramus will confuse that with unhealthy nationalism. Home news is the most interesting kind and it is never supplied as well by outside periodicals. This might be a good time to quote W. R. Wilkerson, publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, who devoted a_ recent column to a discussion of trade paper advertising. It grew out of the statement by a large company’s ad-pub head that he was about to reduce advertising expenditures and rely more on showmanship. This, wrote Wilkerson, is “About as idiotic a statement as has ever been issued in this business.’ Here is an interesting paragraph: “Trade advertising starts all forces within the business talking; that talk generates attention; that attention builds the picture not only to the theatre men who, in return, pass this along to their prospective audiences. Locally, trade ads do another job in raising studio hopes, in attracting creators to their doors, in lifting morale of picture makers. All of which is showmanship.” Showmanship without advertising is impossible, he said. BAY STREET FRIEND asked why my pained.look. I explained that it was bursitis -a lime deposit in my right © shoulder joint. Right away he wanted to incorporate the deposit for 100,000 shares at $1 par value ... Next Fess Parker starrer for Disney, Light in the Forest, is about a white boy raised by Indians. No story on that idea could possibly exceed in interest the true Canadian one, John Tanner, Captive Boy Wanderer of the Border Lands (Ryerson IODE series). In Detroit at 50, after fighting in the fur wars, he recognized the Indian who had kidnapped him and learned of what family he came. He then found his family with the aid of the governor but his own brother, thinking him an Indian, passed him on the street, though on his way to meet John . . . Phil Sherman is now with Shortill and Hodgkins, realtors, Toronto Michael Taylor says that Mario Lanza is the one who isn’t Jackie Gleason . . . Sorry to hear of the passing of Bob Harvey, Odeon manager in Niagara Falls. Everybody liked Bob. judged that after a conversation with him the other day. But if the movie is anywhere near the quality of Gene Fowler’s book about the dapper politician who was the darling of Manhattan in the 20’s, it will be well worth while. Beau James, the book is called. You ought to read it sometime. It is full of understanding, for Fowler obviously had a great affection for Jim Walker and his great love Betty Compton. April 4, 1956