Canadian Film Weekly (Nov 7, 1956)

November 7, 1956 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 5 NFB Film Wins At Regina Festival Top film in the recent seventh annual Regina Film Festival, as selected by the audiences, was the National Film Board’s World in a Marsh, with the United Kingdom Information Office’s Thursday’s Children placing second and Shell Oil’s The Rival World third. In the amateur 16 mm. competition two Regina men finished on top. Sidney Russell Thompson won the Fred Holliday Trophy and Robert L. Moyer.the Regina Film Council Award. Mrs. D. H. O. Woodhams of the IODE headed the festival committee and president of the film council is R. E. (Bob) Johnson, Saskatchewan supervisor for the NFB until his retirement a year ago. Mark Hellinger Story Bought By Columbia Screen rights to the life story of Mark Hellinger have been acquired by Columbia from Gladys Hellinger Gottlieb, widow of the former syndicated columnist and film writer and producer. Leo Katcher will write the script and Jonie Taps produce the film, which will be one of the top-budgeted productions of the company in 1957. Mrs. Gottlieb is vice-president of Canadian Film Industries of Toronto and her husband, Arthur Gottlieb, is president. Short Throws (Continued from Page 1) ward G. Robinson, Joan Crawford, Rock Hudson, James Stewart, Donna Reed, Rhonda Fleming, Randolph Scott, Roy Rogers and Tab Hunter. TOTAL gross income of Allied Artists for the year ended June 30, 1956 was $16,977,000, a gain of $4,307,000 or 34 per cent compared with the previous year’s $12,670,000. Net income in 1956, however, was $371,875, as against $598,494 in 1955, due to a non-recurring item of $461,557 in the latter year. CRAWLEY FILMS began the release of the world’s first series of hockey instructional films recently. Eight subjects, totalling 73 minutes, deal with various phases of the game and are available at $145 for the set in French or English, the low cost being the result of sponsorship by Wheaties and Crown Brand Corn Syrup. Technical director was Willard L’Heureux, director of physical education at the University of Western Ontario. A Crawley film, Generator 4, produced for Aluminium Fiduciaries, was premiered at Edinburgh. Another, Sky Watch on 55, showing construction of the mid-Canada line for Bell Telephone, got a CBC network showing recently. IN HOLLYWOOD recently Charlie Chaplin of UA here phoned the home of an old-time Torontonian, his friend Art Seitman, head of foreign production for RKO. Charlie was shocked to learn from Mrs. Seitman that Art had died of a heart attack a few days earlier while with an RKO crew on location in Japan ... C. B. DeMille, while here, said that “there is a tendency these days to make God a mascot” and he felt that The Ten Commandments might help correct that. He suggested prayer and contemplation with these words: “Time belongs to God and some should be set apart for Him’... Carl Peppercorn, RKO g-m here some years ago, is now head man at Walter Reade’s NY exchange, Continental Films . . . Irving Lesser sneak-screened Oedipus Rex, the Stratford-influenced film in which the characters all wear those long false-faces, at the Seneca, Niagara Falls, for Famous Players’ people and the patrons. The regular film was a Western, The Proud Ones. A drunk came in and watched The Proud Ones for a while, then fell asleep. He woke up during Oedipus Rex, took one look at the screen and rushed out screaming that he would never take another drink. Opinion: For theatres Oedipus Rex is a snoozer instead of a doozer. THE GREAT EDITOR of the New York Sun, Charles A. Dana, gave a series of lectures on journalism at Union College, Schenectady, NY in 1893. I was reading one of them the other day and something he said then is as true today—and not nearly so easy as it reads. What is required of a good reporter? This: “He must learn accurately the facts, and he must state them exactly as they are; and if he can state them with a little degree of life, a little approach to eloquence, or a little humor in his style, why, his report will be perfect. It must be accurate; it must be free from affectation; it must be well set forth, so that there shall not be any doubt as to any part or detail of it, and then if it is enlivened with imagination, or with feeling, or with humor, why, you have got a literary product that no one need be ashamed of.” SHAKESPEARE needs all the help it can get from the other theatre arts to make it playable. The late Roly Young used to insist that Shakespeare was no longer for drama but just for reading. That’s why I can’t figure how anyone but a scholar can get much out of the sort of odd-costumed, semiplatform, reading-type presentations these off-season Stratfordians, the Canadian players, pass off as drama. The Variety man in Buffalo, used “‘pallid’ and “static” in his review of their Hamlet . . . Why doesn’t The Hamilton Spectator hire an all’round theatre-and-film critic of recognized stature? There’s a need of one in that fast-growing city. Someone mailed me the Spectator report of Odeon’s regional meeting, in which Ed Hocura, after meeting visiting Odeonites, trilled: “One learns more from talking to men like them in one hour, than you can ever get out of a trade magazine, or any periodical dealing with the movie industry.” On the margin the anonymous sender, apparently a film-theatre man, wrote: “How wrong can that writer get?’ .. . Writers working on the Billy Bishop story would be well advised to talk to Sam Mantle, manager of the Parkdale. Sam, in the Royal Flying Corps as a scout pilot, saw Roy Brown bring down Baron Richthofen. He was a half-mile away in the air at the time. Sam says the best book on things and people of those early air days is Fly Paper, by Jack Illingsworth. 20th-Fox ‘The Enemy Below' Dick Powell will produce 20thFox’ The Enemy Below. Orson Welles To Direct MGM has signed Orson Welles to direct Tip on a Dead Jockey, which will star Robert Taylor. Galahad's ‘The Violators’ Arthur O’Connell has been signed by Galahad Productions for the lead role in The Violators. Stars Of MGM's ‘Gun Glory’ Stewart Granger and Burl Ives will star in MGM’s Gun Glory. News Clips Italiafilm (Canada) Limited has been incorporated in Ontario with an authorized capital of $40,000 to “carry on the general business of theatrical agents” . . . Legitimate theatre of native origin is very alive in Toronto. Mavor Moore’s The Optimist ran for seven weeks at the Avenue, formerly a movie theatre, and Salad Days, after doing five weeks in the Hart House Theatre, moved into the Royal Alexandra for two . . . The Astral double bill of Hot Rod Girls and Girls in Prison did record-breaking business at FPCC’s Princess in Montreal and was held over. Pay TV wire circuits are being set up in the USA. Independent Video Theatres, using “home theatre’’ equipment from the Jerrold Electronics Corporation of Philadelphia, is setting up a circuit in Bartleville, Oklahoma, where it will pick up and distribute movies from one of its three theatres there. No government permission is needed. Famous Players, through its Trans-Canada Telemeter, which Eugene Fitzgibbons heads, is doing the same here. Harry Popkin of Hollywood, exTorontonian who is a prominent California exhibitor and producer, is one of the leaders among the anti-Yates stockholders of Republic . . . Frank Ricketson, Jr., v-p and g-m of the USA’s National Theatres, predicts that three years from now there will be 6,000 theatres less in the United States .. . New manager of Odeon’s Plaza, Victoria, is Steve Allen, who succeeded Jack Armstrong, now managing the Odeon. The papers of Lord Beaverbrook, a former Canadian, supported British exhibitors in their opposition to making the tax which feeds the Eady Fund, a financial pool for production, legal instead of voluntary. Beaverbrook, who once had substantial film interests, also wants the state-created Film Finance Corporation scrapped so that British films can learn to make their own way. Producers disagree violently . . . Teen-age vandalism is a bad problem for the Cobalt, Ontario theatre. Charles Jennings, Ottawa, CBC’s director of programs, will represent Canada at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference in Sydney, Australia November 7-28. With him will be J. E. Hayes, Montreal, chief engineer, and R. S. James, Toronto, assistant supervisor of farm and fisheries broadcasts . . . Arthur DeBra of the MPAA staff will serve as chairman of the National Promotion Committee, which aims to build movie business. ——