Canadian Film Weekly (Jul 25, 1956)

CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY July 25, 1956 Vol. 21, No, 30 July 25, 1956 HYE BOSSIN, Editor Assistant Editor Ben Halter Office Manager ~ Esther Silver CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Canada Authorized as Second Class Mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa Published by Film Publications of Canada, Limited 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada — Phone WAlInut 4-3707 Price $3.00 per year. FIRE DAMAGE (Continued from Page 1) Fire Commissioner’s Office in Ottawa, have not yet been issued for 1954 and 1955. Five theatres were completely destroyed by fire so far this year. Three Quebec situations were gutted—O. E. Fontaine’s 523-seat Empire, one of LaTuque’s two houses; E. Montcalm’s 280-seat Theatre Moderne in St. Julienne, a six-day, French-language situation that was one of two there; and John Dydzak’s 400-seat Palace in Val d’Or, which had an estimated loss of $135,000. The LaTuque house is being rebuilt at an approximate cost of $100,000. Destroyed in Saskatchewan was the 150-seat Frontier at Frontier, a Board of Trade operation until its closing two weeks earlier, in the first week of February. Early in June the Academy, Maillardville, BC, operated by Harold and Garnett Locke of Vancouver, was closed by a fire that did an estimated $125,000 worth of damage. Six serious theatre fires occurred during 1955, the major one being the destruction of the F. G. Spencer circuit’s 1,050-seat Prince Edward in Charlottetown. Three of the remaining five burned out were in Quebec, the exception being the 195-seat Paradise of J. P. Hawkins in Paradise Valley, Alberta, and P. Rose’s 288seat Rose Mac in Langruth, Manitoba. The Quebec houses were A. G. Germain’s 150-seat combined town hall and theatre in Quyon; A. Gilbert’s six-day, 400-seat Figaro in Amqui; and A. Gringras’ 384-seat Canada in Levis. Fires in theatres average about 40 per year, ranging from little more than smoke to complete destruction. It is significant that only one of 11 theatres gutted in the last 18 months is being rebuilt. ‘Capital Offense’ MGM has borrowed Coleen Miller from Universal-International to star with Leslie Nielsen in Capital Offense. Miss Miller, who . recently completed The Rawhide Years with Tony Curtis, will play Nielsen’s bride, who thwarts lis kidnappers. 10 From Paramount (Continued from Page 1) While War and Peace and The Ten Commandments, films of the greatest importance in the company’s entire releasing history, will only enter the initial phase of their long-range distribution during the second half of 1956, the eight other pictures for all practical purposes will be released generally in the period. In keeping with Paramount’s announced policy for all its productions, the ten new films have been made in VistaVision. Eight are in Technicolor and two were shot in black and white. Paramount’s general release schedule for July through December follows: July —Panama-Frank’s That Certain Feeling, in Technicolor, starring Bob Hope, Eva Marie Saint and George Sanders, and Perlberg-Seaton’s The Proud and Profane, top-billing William Holden and Deborah Kerr. August—Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’ Pardners, in Technicolor. September — The Vagabond King, in Technicolor, introducing Oreste co-starring with Kathryn Grayson, Rita Moreno and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and The Search for Bridey Murphy, starring Louis Hayward, Teresa Wright and Nancy Gates. October — Edward Dmytryk’s The Mountain, in Technicolor, starring Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner and Claire Trevor. November—Three Violent Peo ple, in Technicolor, starring Charlton Heston, Anne Baxter, Gilbert Roland and_ Forrest Tucker. December—Hal Wallis’ Hollywood or Bust, in Technicolor, starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis with Anita Ekberg and Pat Crowley. November will mark premieres of The Ten Commandments, at the Criterion, New York; Warner’s Beverly, Los Angeles; RKO Keith’s, Washington; the Randolph, Philadelphia; the Astor, Boston; University, Toronto; Loew’s Ohio, Cleveland; Madison, Detroit, and McVickers, Chicago. Additional premieres of the DeMille masterpiece will follow in Columbia, Aldrich In Two-Picture Deal Columbia Pictures has signed Robert Aldrich to a two-picture contract and his first assignment will be the direction of Garment Center, story of a fight to rid a New York garment manufacturing firm of murderous, unionbusting racketeers. Aldrich’s second film for Columbia will be an independent production to be made by his company, The Associates and Aldrich, and to be chosen before Garment Center is completed. December in Baltimore, Montreal, Miami Beach, San Francisco and Cincinnati, according to present indications. War and Peace, viewed recently in London for the first time by top Paramount executives, is due to have its world premiere in August at the Capitol Theatre, New York. Barney Balaban, Paramount president, said in London that “the unprecedented expenditure of talent, time and money” for “the vast adventure in supershowmanship”’ represented by War and Peace, two years in the planning and a year in production, has led him to conclude that “in all of my long experience in Show Business I honestly can think of only four or five other pictures qualified to rank with it.” The Ten Commandments includes in its top cast Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nina Foch, Martha Scott, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price and others. The key roles in War and Peace are filled by Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Anita Ekberg, John Mills, Vittorio Gassman and others. Le News Clips Research to determine to best time for the last cinema performance may be undertaken by London exhibitors, since some consider they start too early for people who come home later from work than others . . . Tillicum Outdoor Theatre, near Victoria, just spent $8,000 for a giant screen. Business is a little better this season than last, Manager Bill Ward said . . . Copyright for stills in Britain will be extended from 25 to 50 years in the Act about to be approved by Parliament. The Act also extends the copyright on films for the same length of time. Robert Rose Productions, specializing in TV commercials, now occupies the old CHUM studio on Mutual Street, Toronto ... Dr. David W. Petegorsky, 41, a member of Canada’s National Film Board during the war, died recently at his home in New York after a long illness . . . The HiWay Drive-in at Renfrew and the Ski-Hi Drive-in at Arnprior, both owned by the Ottawa Valley Amusement Company, have become members of the Motion Picture Theatres Association of Ontario . Odeon Theatres is suing the City of Vancouver for unstated damages to the Lux Theatre caused by a burst water main last March. OUR BUSINESS (Continued from Page 1) mothballs comes the old a about there being nothing w with our business that good tures Cannot cure. There are many things wrong with our business which are in no way related to good pictures and which could be cured by co operation and clear thinking, but © probably won't be. It has become a popular pastime to brand TV as the villain and the architect of all our misfortunes. This is not so, and we must adjust our thinking to the realization that TV is a product of the electronic age and another business rival. Motion pictures producers are no longer in a panic because of TV. They have literally joined it and are prepared to produce for this medium as well as motion picture theatres to the point that if theatre revenues are not sufficiently good they can switch their attention entirely to TV. They feel that the future belongs to them and that they can always peddle their wares on one side of the street if not on both. It is difficult to take issue with this viewpoint, just as one could scarcely complain if a theatre owner was to convert his property to another use if it was not economically feasible to continue to use it as a place of motion picture entertainment. However, the complete sellout to TV comes when backlogs of major film productions are sold for TV showings. The potential perils of this trend were dramatically highlighted to me one day when I asked a theas~ ~~ tre manager why his matinee attendance was so poor. He pointed out to me that the advertised film being shown on TV that afternoon, although old, was better than what he was presently showing. Imagine the consequences when the backlogs of many top producers become available for showing on TY. If movie attendances continue to shrink, production budgets will be affected because of smaller returns. It is difficult to sell entertainment which a competitor is giving away, even though the competitor’s presentation may be inferior. The pattern for the future is still in the sketching stage. Form and color are yet to be applied. Whether producers will be able to successfully do business with two competing facets of entertainment is still a moot point. Whether theatres will be able to survive this new kind of competition is still an unanswered question. We have reconciled ourselves to the fact that weekly per capita attendance is considerably less than it was and has very little chance of again hitting the heights of former years. However, the downward trend has been temporarily reversed and_ the problem now is to keep it moving in this new direction.