Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 11, 1956)

April 11, 1956 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY ANTI-TAX STAND (Continued from Page 1) “we are very much inclined to feel that the theatre operators’ case has a good deal of logic and common sense.’”’ The rest of the editorial follows: ‘It is no secret that for many years, at certain seasons, the theatres have been taking a beating. Night after night the large auditoriums of these places of entertainment hold but a handful of people. In the summer, baseball and horse racing get the crowds; in the winter there are hockey, curling, bowling and a host of other entertainments and functions, looming largely among which is the still popular game of bingo. There’s little point in saying that these take up only one or two nights a week. That may be very true, but the average family just hasn’t enough money to spend on theatre tickets if a couple of other events during the week have been attended. — “And now, adding to the theatre owners’ troubles, has come a keep-them-at-home craze known as television. It may be that, like radio, television will lose its novelty, but, unlike radio, television is ‘just like the movies,’ because we see the pictures right in the comfort of our own homes. To be honest about it, however, bewhiskered Charlie Chan movies and the many other once were hot stuff shows, in Granddad’s day, are too wholly horrible to now have foisted upon us. To think that in a day when we're told that atomic breakfast egg-boiling is just around the corner we have to suffer through piercingly wornout movies made 20 and 30 or more years ago is just too much. And yet, unbelievable as it may seem, it is just these dead-as-adodo films that are making heavy inroads into the business of theatres which take _ the greatest of trouble to place before us, for the few cents a ticket costs, the absorbing, upto-date spectacles so common on our theatre screens today. And the theatres are enterprises which not only give very extensive employment to our own citizens but bring into the towns or cities where they are operating a vast amount of viewers, and consequently business to other stores, from outside points. “The theatre men told the government they no longer can afford to pay the amusement tax, which averages 11 and 12 per cent of the ticket price. This was started 40 years ago, aS a war tax, and was never removed. The tax was originally levied on the basis of ability to pay, rather than with consideration of equitable distribution of the tax burden, they contended. Now, in New Brunswick, and in varying conditions across Cana New 35 Mm. Theatres Since Last Year Book of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Town Theatre = ‘Capacity Licensee Alberta Edmonton _.......... Sahn ces ee ee 800 Windsor Theatres Ltd. Red Deer .......... Poramountic:. coe 924 J. Purnell & Sons (FP) TLopieldiat (is pres Community Centre — Community League Saskatchewan Moosomin ........ BN (ot (che AP RoR RT aoe ERIM a Lloyd H. Bradley Pe tics: soe ee Fortes <ceus n ee e 200 Tom Yacyshyn Quebec Gracefield........ REGO A EC ae cee oh 360 Lucien Bertrand Nouvelle — .......... Centre de Loisirs ........ a Centre de Loisirs St. Jean d’Evangelist Salle Paroissial.......... 300 Centre de Loisirs Newfoundland Grand Falls ...... POpUIOr: wate eee 600 Charles Edwards Twillingate ...... 300 Harry Randell e Theatres Under Construction Town Theatre AES. Seats _— Licensee oo are British Columbia Fruitvale” ............ lc tedecccsnce eet 350 R. Winfield Nechako Centre SS es CE ee a R. C. Steel & H. Howard GEE gy Ko Lumereep erent tien eee tte eects 650 Kitimat Theas. Ltd. Alberta Brownvale i.c.csc es eetlece ee eeeenee — M. Rabchak Edgerton ........-Gardiuini eee aa 480 J. F, Hawk EGSON: -shs.-..vesweets ROXKVee cen eas an ceee. Seedy — H. Bubel Grand Centre ..... Grand ‘Centre Ets Rae ets Grand Prairie ... = jee< 300. Carl Olson — R. R. Lancaster Hinton 2.4 ee HintOns: Se: eese ees — A. M, Montemurro Medicine: Hat ci: 0 ea ee 850 R. Dederer Sangudo. o2245.0.5aS ee ee ear 2 — Pudar Bros. Wildwood .......... Wildwood! #4 322-056 —_— M. M. Nikoloynk Saskatchewan LestocksiG ae A ae — W. Cook Smylie: ies. coco cree See erenee _ J. Dobni MICEROGIE ek ho occa a nc becetece ee eeee — Ontario Manitouwadge — —_— Premier Operating Quebec Chibougamau... VIMY ....... eee —_— Robert Gallichan Forestville ........ Grystalc) ca eee 365 Albert Drapeau Schefferville 2.0.0.5 Meese — J. A. Layden Senneterre _........ eee eeeee ees — RCAF Seven Islands, Moisie’ ioe RCAF Station ........ Rares RCAF Cinema D’Erable ........ St. Emile L’Energie St. Sylvestre RCAF —G. Bourdnadaire UA's 'Good Old Charley Faye’ Figaro, Inc. has purchased screen rights to David Karp’s TV play, Good Old Charley Faye, and will film it for UA release. da, most theatres ‘have lost or are rapidly losing that ability to pay; and experience shows further that appreciable savings in costs of operation are not possible.’ “We take it, from what was available in the news columns, that the theatre people would be happy to pay the provincial sales tax, which, of course, would be expected of them. “A theatre is an important business to any community. Many times its facilities are thrown open to the public for community gatherings and other such large events, If nothing else is owed them, the deepest consideration of the provincial government on the problems now facing them is.” Columbia's ‘Biscayne Drive’ Patricia Medina and Lee J. Cobb will star in Columbia’s Shakedown on Biscayne Drive. Paramount's ‘The Maverick’ Gilbert Roland will star with Charlton Heston and Anne Baxter in Paramount’s The Maverick, now under way. Fuller To Produce Three For RKO RKO has concluded negotiations with Samuel Fuller for him to write, direct and produce four motion pictures. Globe Enterprises, Inc., Fuller’s independent motion picture organization, completed the negotiations with RKO. The first of the quartet of films for RKO will be Run of the Arrow, an original screenplay by Fuller. It will begin filming in May at the RKO studio. A top case of players will be secured for the production. SEATING (Continued from Page 1) the number of drive-ins opened was more than three times greater than the number closed. Most of the new theatres were opened by Independents in the one-theatre category. The evenStephen relationship of openings and closings is, of course, no comfort to those Independents who had to go out of business. Quite a few theatres, among them some drive-ins, were sold and the buildings or property converted to another use. In the period under discussion 74 theatres, six of them driveins, closed and 60 theatres—21 of them drive-ins— opened in Canada. Most of the theatres that closed were old and outmoded physically, while those opened were built from the ground up and have the newest and best of furnishings and equipment. The 68 auditorium theatres closed had 29,883 seats, an average of 439 each, and the six drive-ins, totalling 2,740 cars, accommodated 6,850 persons together 36,733. The drive-in figure is arrived at by multiplying the number of cars by twoand-a-half, since the provincial seat tax is usually applied on that basis. Of the new theatres the 39 roofed-in situations added 18,028 seats to the total—an average of 462 seats per house. The 21 drive-ins had room for 7,462 cars—an average of 355—or personal accommodation for 18,655, for a total of 36,683 for all new theatres. Therefore the actual loss in seating is 36,733 for theatres closed, less the 36,683 for those added, for a difference of only 50 seats! In the new theatres 25 of the 39 standard-type houses and 18 of the 21 ozoners were in localities which previously had none of the type opened. In the houses shuttered 27 of the 68 “hardtops” and all six drive-ins were the only ones in their areas. The new theatres are mainly in areas where industrial and other expansion has made the opening of the community’s first 35 mm. theatre economical feasible, regardless of television and other entertainment. It is also obvious from the high percentage of dark houses being the only one in their town that overseating or competition from other theatres is not the determining factor in driving them out of business. Paramount's ‘Omar Khayyam’ Joan Taylor has been cast in Paramount’s Omar Khayyam, Warners’ ‘Buffalo Grass’ Alan Ladd and Virginia Mayo will star in Warners’ Buffalo Grass. :