Canadian Film Weekly (Jun 6, 1956)

Page 6 Observanda PRESENTATION of the Canadian Film Awards will be made in the Avon Theatre, Stratford, on Monday, August 6. There’s a matinee Film Festival showing that day. The theatre-tent will offer The Merry Wives of Windsor that evening, while Inge Borkh and Alexander Welitsch are pencilled in for a joint recital in the Concert Hall. Might be a good idea to start the presentations at 4 p.m. or thereabouts, giving folks a chance to take in one of the evening attractions _,. Alex Barris, the Globe and Mail scribitzer, will write and emcee CBC-TV’s summer replacement for Cross-Canada Hit Parade, which Len Casey will produce. It’s to run for 13 weeks starting July 4... Art Arthur of the DeMille setup was in for a day talking about The Ten Commandments with Jim Nairn of Famous Players, Tom Daley of the University, Win Barron of Paramount here and Maxwell Hamilton of Paramount, NY. Many years ago, when Art was a local newspaperman, he told Tom Daley, his pal, about having written away for a job as a Broadway columnist on the Brooklyn Eagle. The next day he came into Tom’s office at the Uptown, holding a telegram and annoyed at him. Art told Tom that he had gone too far in sending him a fake telegram that said he had the job. A man’s anxiety was not material for a joke, even by a close pal. Tom’s amazed denial was followed by Art’s first realization that he did have the job! That took him out of Toronto. Neither he nor Tom thought then that the day would ever come when they would have business together on a film. PHIL STONE is in the Doctors’ Hospital after some minor but painful surgery ... Popcornucopia? In the PCA _ organ, Merchandiser, Super Pufft’s Syd Spiegel says the Kitchener Arena made a $17,000 net profit on popcorn alone in 42 months. Did you know that the Aztecs used to decorate their idols with garlands of popcorn? .. . Win and Dot Barron’s angel, Gay, is wearing silver wings. American Airlines gave them to her when she qualified as a stewardess ... A & F, Montreal, is handling NTA’s 52 Fox TV features for Canada . . . Civil defence authorities shouldn’t worry about keeping the streets clear in case of an air raid. The movies will give them the secret. Ever notice how one man stalks another along what is obviously a public thoroughfare in mid-day, but not a car or another person is in sight. Where’d everybody go? This secret is in the class with the one about how movie horses have rears that bullets must bounce off. The riders drop from wild shots but not the horses .. . This sounds familiar: “Meeting J. B. Priestley was a disillusioning experience because he is one of those authors who shouldn’t be met. That so charming a book as The Good Companions could be his work is almost incredible to me. The man is the typical smug Englishman just as Priestley himself might portray him: cocksure, weighty, standoffish . . .” That’s a quote from Bernard Sobel’s Broadway Heartbeat (Hermitage House, NY, 1953). THE BRIDEY MURPHY caper is somewhat late in the celJuloid sphere. It seems to me that we had that idea in 1933, when Berkeley Square, starring Leslie Howard and some retroattractive femme, was issued... That army-sized entourage of Ray Robinson’s makes me wonder why it doesn’t take some weekend off and free Africa ... Ford TV Graphic ought to feature Mack Sennett on one program. This lively old-timer from Quebec who gave many players their start through his Bathing Beauties and Keystone Cops, is still around Hollywood. Gene Fowler did a biography of him, Father Goose, some years ago and in it reported the veteran’s opinions about the difference between the Canadian and the American sense of humor. . . When the CBC ran a series of “serious” films some years ago it brought in an American emcee. On the CBC Wednesday Night of June 6 there will be a 45-minute discussion about the effect of films on American life, with three USA critics participating and C. A. Lejeune of the London Observer giving an English view of American movies. There is no Canadian critic in on it. Can't figure why, for the CBC does much to keep alive intellectual interest in films through Canadian critics and commentators . . . According to Theatre Collections in Libraries and Museums, by Gilder and Freedley, there are 8,100 titles in the various branches of the Toronto Public Library . . . seven Shakespeares in the Toronto phone directory. There are CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY } On The .—tS will NE SOSEWN | Typographs SQUARE YOU KNOW the character who’s always chiselling free advice from professional men he meets socially or in a locker room. He was introduced to a Dr. Brown and right away asked a health question. Dr. Brown explained that he was a Doctor of Economics. That stopped the enquirer for only a moment. ‘So, Doc,” he asked, “What’s your choice of a good industrial stock?” .. . Sammy Sales emceed the bachelor dinner for Barry Little, son of Casino manager Murray Little, at the Sign of the Steer. Barry, a 23-year-old med student at the U of T, will marry the talented 19-year-old actress, Toby Tarnow, a Howdy Doody regular well remembered for her recent performance in the title role of CBC-TV’s Anne of Green Gables. After dinner Dave Bossin, Lou Appleby and I went with Fred Malone, QC, former assistant Crown Attorney here, to spend a while in his downstairs den, where hangs his fabulous gun collection. I toyed with a Tommy gun — one of those used in the infamous St. Valentine’s massacre, when Capone mobsters dressed as cops wiped out a batch of O’Banions, their competitors in the booze business . . . Condolences to Calgary’s Ken Leach, who lost his mother in Spokane. She was nearing the century mark. A LADY WAS asked by her ten-year-old boy why, if she argued with Pop all the time, did she marry him? She thought for a moment, smiled and said: “I guess [ was too young to know any — better and too old to do any better” . . . An executive who recently went to work for a boss notorious as a loud, abusive blame-shifter was asked after a few weeks how he stood the job. The exec shrugged and explained: “I’ve been called worse things for less money” . . . Curt waitress: “Will you have a cup of coffee or what?” Customer: “Pll have what with cream and sugar”... LeRoy Prinz’ company, busy on the Billy Bishop film, will follow up with a Hudson’s Bay yarn. Fox made one from an Art Arthur story years ago, starring Laird Cregar and Paul Muni. ADMISSIONS A DAY PAY FOR MAGNETIC SOUND © It's as economical as that to equip any theatre sound system with Magnetic sound to play the new composite magnetic-optical prints. © Furthermore, the parts supplied for the conversion include the famous Westrex Magnetic Sound Head. It is capable of reproducing full stereophonic sound after the necessary additional amplifiers and loudspeakers are installed. ®@ Maintenance Costs are low because only the wearable gaps on the Magnetic pick-ups need be replaced. For complete details call your nearest D.S.E.L. office DOMIMON SOUND Equipments Limited 1S) HEAD OFFICE: 4040 St. Catherine Street West, Montreal. BRANCHES AT: Halifax, Saint John, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, London, North Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver. June 6, 1956 ew