Canadian Film Weekly (Jul 11, 1956)

~~ Set eae ~~ | July 11, 1956 Typographs THEATRE MANAGER who was so uncivil to the gentleman who had been misdirected into the former’s parking spot by an attendant should know that he was addressing a local MPP. He not only lost his theatre some good patrons but probably made the industry an enemy . . . Frank Friedman, one-time Liberty editorial staffer, has a novel coming out in Britain. It’s a Book Society choice too... Milton Shulman, once of here and now a Beaverbrook drama critic in the UK, was married recently. It’s his second whirl on the matrimonial merry-go-round . . . Glenn Ireton’s Far East Film News, printed weekly in Tokyo with the editorial aid of his recent bride, Kikuko Monica, just changed to a bigger format. Glenn was WB ad-pub chief in Canada some years = ago, so that probably has something to do with this information: “Published weekly by Amusement Trade Publications, Ltd., 602 Confederation Life Bldg., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and distributed by Rengo Film News Co. Ltd., established May 15, 1953, in Tokyo, Japan.” The Winnipeg address is of E. A. Brotman, QC ... Peter Morrison just quit as editor of The Film Weekly, Australia to be an ad-pub exec and Don Carle Gillette, who stepped out as editor of The Hollywood Reporter long enough to write a book, is to succeed his successor, McCullagh St. Johns. WIZARD OF OZ goes into the University after John and Julie, Do you remember Bert Lahr’s classic performance as the cowardly lion? I saw his priceless work on Broadway in the amusing puzzler, Waiting for Godot. We were in his dressingroom after a matinee and into the open door came a lady, eyes wide and mouth agape in admiration. She finally found her voice and said: “I still don’t understand the play but you were wonderful, Mr. Lahr.” Answered Bert: “Thank you. That’s two of us. I don’t understand it either” . . . You lucky Muskoka Lodgers! Jack and Mildred Pichon, about the best-looking, most personable and top-talented singing team in. Show Business, will again be entertaining and hosting at Sam Handler’s Port Sydney resort this summer. There, too, Dave Rush’s Barrie battler, James J. Parker, is training for his late July fight with Archie Moore in Jack Kent Cooke’s ballyard . . . Most sensational short, The Miracle of Todd-AO, is now in front of Oklahoma! at the Tivoli. You don’t think a film can make you jump out of your seat? — Get your money up, mister . . . That camera Paramount uses for its newsreel trademark is at least 30 years old, newsreeler Roy Tash says . . . Trapeze grosses are absolutely staggering . . . Karsh’s recent Hollywood portraits due soon in Maclean’s. IN BUFFALO recently Harry Ginsler of Astral Films saw this Filmrow scene: A hearse drove up to a film exchange. Two grey-gloved top-hatted attendants removed the coffin and with measured tread carried it into the main office. They laid it down and, as one stood with his hat over his heart, the other opened the coffin lid, reached in and brought out a can of film. On it was a wreath with these words: “This Film Died.” They picked up the coffin, put it back in the hearse and drove off, leaving the can. Nobody’s telling who these joking exhibitors were and the name of the film . .. So many people around here have bits of real estate speculations that someone observed: “If that land boom collapses suddenly Toronto will sure have a lot of new farmers” . . . Roses of Yesterday Blooming Again: Laura La Plante, she of the silent screen who was one of the first Canadian stars, will play Betty Hutton’s mother in Republic’s Spring Reunion . . . MGM just made Rocky Graziano’s story, Somebody Up There Likes Me. How about Epigraph Productions making the story of Lucius Q. Porkhead, its president, with the title, Nobody Down Here Likes Me. Maybe as a serial—in 15 epithets. Boy, is this getting to be a poison pun letter . . . Gerry Kedey of Motion Picture Centre is again chairman of the film-TV div. United Appeal of Greater Toronto . . Hey, Dickens lovers! David Copperfield Explorations Limited is a new Ontario mining venture. And dig the Dickensian flavor of the names of these shareholders: Barnabas William Nixon Apple and Kenneth Gordon Rupert Gwynne-Timothy. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 5 Observanda CLYDE GILMOUR, one-man opinion syndicate and The Telegram movie critic, is set to scrutinize Hollywood in person .. . At lawst, my dear Cholmondeley! The Social Register of Canada Company, a new Toronto firm, will publish the names “of wellknown and socially well-sponsored individuals resident in Canada.” Now, don’t any of youse guys nominate Tim Buck or Snarky Farkeson . . . Old-timers say that most of the Vancouver theatres just bought by Famous Players from Paul Nathanson were built by W. J. Langer in the ’20s with his winnings from the Irish Sweepstakes . . Would there be a Mansfield or a Dors if there wasn’t a Monroe? And would there be a Monroe if there hadn’t been a Harlow? So next year Monroe will play the title role in The Jean Harlow Story, now being scripted by Adela Rogers St. Johns for Fox ... Two scribes who toured UK studios recently are Les Wedman of The Vancouver Province and Sydney Johnston of The Montreal Star . . If you are a male and June Callwood’s so-very-wise Maclean’s article, The Battle of the Sexes, doesn’t roil your think-tank, bringing to the surface new realizations, then it’s got a leak in it . . . Sign in the Ford Hotel: “Do Not Smoke In Bed. The Ashes On the Floor May Be You”... Jn the tent at Stratford, where each evening their lives again all the beauty of the English tongue, this curt and doubtful word is above the door to the male retreat: “GENTS”... Friends will be sorry to hear that Bill Hartnett, Ottawa IA man, passed on. He was ill quite frequently. PIGEONS ARE to be preferred to people as company, George M. Cohan said long ago. He said it through a park-lounger named Parker, whom he portrayed in his own play, Pigeons and People, first presented a decade before Cohan’s death in 1942. About this time next year we will be privileged to witness a strange reunion— that of Cohan and his beloved pigeons. Do you know the Broadway island between 46th and 47th Street? It has been known as Duffy Square since the statue of Father Duffy, famed Padre of the Fighting 69th in WWI, was placed on the 47th Street side. That statue gives the island distinction; that and one other thing—the large flock of fat, lazy pigeons that inhabit it. About a year from now there will be erected on the 46th Street side, and facing Father Duffy, a statue of Cohan. Funds are being raised now by the 100 members of the George M. Cohan Committee, of which Oscar Hammerstein 2nd is chairman. They'll need $75,000 and Irving Berlin, who suggested the inscription for the statue, has given $10,000. The inscription: “Give My Regards to Broadway.” And so Cohan, through a statue that symbolizes all the things he was, will be close to pigeons, sharing them with Father Duffy. For, as you may have observed, pigeons and statues spend more time in each other’s company than pigeons and people. LOU CHESLER told Lester Dinoff of Motion Picture Daily that his Ridgeway Corporation, which is incorporated in this country, will keep scouting for TV libraries... Here’s a switch: A NY TV film sales outfit may use cinema screen ads to call attention to telecasts . . . Better keep your mouth shut while watching Paramount’s The Mountain or your heart will pop right out of it. What a supremely magnificent acting job Spencer Tracy does—and how that audience sighs with relief and applauds involuntarily as he overcomes those high, rocky ridges! Just great . . . Nowhere and going nowhere is that projected association of Canadian TV films sales companies. Lloyd Burns of Screen Gems chaired it pro tem but the conclusion was that it’s too early for such a body... Did you know that at least a quarter million dollars worth of TV film commercials went to NY studios from the Toronto area alone in the last year? Reason: No confidence in local quality by the agencies... Have you noticed that none of the RKO films bought last December for TV by C & C Super Corporation—a deal in which Matty Fox had an interest — has been sold in Canada yet? . . . Kate Aitken, talking on Tabloid about the Queen at the Victoria Cross tri-centenary celebration in London: “You know, if that girl wasn’t Queen, I’d say she ought to be in Show Business.” Wouldn’t Patricia Fitzgerald, who heads MCA’s Canadian talent department, just love to have her as a client! . . . Would you call neurotic dogs, much publicized lately, a psychoanimalytical problem? . . . Ex-ASN lensman Bob Brooks just joined Chetwynd Films.