Canadian Film Weekly (May 8, 1957)

May 8, 1957 Typographs MUCH TALK about the film called The Incredible Shrinking Man. How about one called The Incredible Shrinking Dollar? . . . Three copies of our Year Book have been filched from the Variety clubrooms to date this year and we keep supplying Mike Peckin, the steward, with new ones. We’re flattered . Tab Hunter is the one who isn’t Bob Wagener, says Clyde Gilmour. And may I add, Randolph Scott is the poor man’s Gary Cooper . . . I loved The Brave One but I wish they’d told me whether this time the boy was going to be allowed to keep the bull as they faded out on them walking out of the ring together . . . Fashion note by Sidney Skolsky: “The solid black suit has practically become a uniform for the representatives of the big ae theatrical agencies” .. . Ted Abrams left ASN to devote more time to his own ad-publicity agency .. . Self-revelations in book form, such as those of Lillian Roth and Diana Barrymore, indicate that weakness and indiscretion have become valuable commodities if packaged right . . . If Fame isn’t fleeting so whatever became of Kenny Delmar, the Senator Claghorn of some years ago? .. . Did you hear about the fellow who crossed an owl with a goat? He got a hootenanny, says Doug Miller . . . Heard: ‘‘For a Cadillac prices go up 20%.” ONTARIO ASN manager Jack McKay quit to join Shelly Films on May 6... A shareholder in a mining company chose an interesting way to indicate to the management that he thinks he’s being had. In the return envelope for the proxy he sent dried horse leavings . . . Timing in boxing is when you counter or block at just the right instant. In Show Business, says Wilfred Granville in Deutsch of London’s A Dictionary of Theatrical Terms, it’s “The pace, pausing, and tricks of elocution used by experienced artistes.” The ability to ride with audience reaction, thereby sustaining its interest and ‘increasing its enjoyment, is the hope of all performers. The other 3 a.m., in the Sea Hi chowmeinery, I heard a discussion of this by two top straightmen, Parker Gee and Al Fisher. They agreed on the comedian with the finest timing in the business—and he isn’t among its biggest names. He’s the burlecue comic, Joe DiRita . . . “In the Canadian cities the acrobats, dancing and novelty acts were better received. Back in the states the talking comedy acts were the favorites’—Fred Allen, reminiscing about the vaudeville of 191020, in his autobiog, Much Ado About Me. It’s still like that .. . Does proximity breed contempt? In the overall I’d say the Montreal critics favor CBC dramas of Toronto origin oftener than the local critics do. THERE AREN’T any shareholder eruptions at Famous Players. The 33 persons at the annual meeting represented 70 per cent of the stock and didn’t ask any questions even after J. J. Fitzgibbons invited them to. J. J. had some fine things to say about his public relations chief, Jim Nairn, which is how to make a lot of us happy . . . I heard the other day about a Mah Jong club that marked the end of its season with-a trip to Bermuda. Why, it wasn’t so long ago that lunch at the One Two Club was considered a big way of saying so-long by the gals. Then the rich ones began going to Buffalo. What a country! ... I hear much praiseful palaver about the films that Jim Beveridge made for Shell in India while on leave from the NFB. Shouldn’t he ought to be making films for Canada? . . . Insults, a book edited by Max Herzberg: “J. B. Priestley, after three of his plays had failed in New York, complained both of the New York critics and the New York atmosphere. ‘I can’t sleep in New York,’ he said querulously. Walter Winchell retorted, ‘Why doesn’t Priestley try seeing one of his own plays?’”’ . Will the Chrysler Festival be a once-a-weeker next time around? ... “The films are virtuous; the methods used to promote them are not’”—Walter O’Hearn on Fighting Words. Thorold Dickinson, same program: ‘The Bachelor Party would have horrified exhibitors ten years ago”’ . Plans for a TV City near Toronto? Briggs says so in Vision. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY | Op Welcome, John SQUARE NOTHING BUT a homecoming could generate the welcome that John Grierson got on his return to this country, in which he was an important figure during the most exciting decade of its modern history. His presence stirred wide general interest and great personal affection and exposure to him revealed the same stimulating personality and the same provocative thinking. Grierson and his National Film Board aides, driven by a wartime urgency, helped tell Canadians what Canada needed from them — and why. The miracle of their work looms even larger in the mind when one thinks of the National Film Board’s new and outstanding quarters in Montreal, then recalls the collection of tired real estate that sheltered Grierson’s people, many of them the merest tyros at the trade. More than that, the movies of the years around and including 1939, when the war began for us, were often of a never-never world in modern dress. It being the time of the depression, people were accustomed to escape from the drab surroundings in which they lived and from thoughts of an unpromising future by going to them. Here they got a mild and harmless anaesthetic against the pain of living or borrowed for a few hours a sense of self-esteem through unconscious identification with the happy people on the screen, among whom there were no obvious economic problems. Into this warm, lulling atmosphere, so unsuited to sharp thinking, came John Grierson. His films opened one window in the moviegoer’s mind through which entered the icy, wakening winds of reality. Realism arrived through realization, instead of through celluloid shock treatment. He and his people served Canada wonderfully well when they were most needed. He did more than that. Something of him is in all the people who came under his influence and in the people who came under theirs since. As Mavor Moore wrote in A Theatre in Canada, which appeared in the University of Toronto Quarterly: “John Grierson and Tyrone Guthrie are the two people who galvanized our artistic life.” THE CAULDRON, title of Michael Powell’s proposed movie, will be a book first. He was here doing research for a literary effort rather than a film, says Jim Cowan, his Canadian rep ...I didn’t know that Toronto has a fine large auditorium, centrally located and in a beautiful structure, that hasn’t been used for many years. It’s on the top floor of the Public Library at College and St. George. Harry Campbell, Chief Librarian, who was with the Film Board in the mid-’40s, was telling Eugene Kash of Ottawa about it at the cocktail party Ralph Foster and Julian Roffman gave for John Grierson on the floor of their Meridian studio. I listened with great interest, since I live near the Library and spend much time there. I hope good use is made of it in the future . . . Good looking and good reading is The Indians of Quetico, a brief, hardcovered book by E. S. Coatsworth. That’s Torchy, Alex Metcalfe’s aide at MPTV, who is an authority on Indians and an excellent writer . . . Duke Curtis, that good guy, is Out In Front. He made his debut as a leader with the One Two Club orchestra. May you always be Out In Front, Duke, old boy. The rest of us Jack Levy Backroom Boys are proud of you. QUITE A LAUGH was raised by John Grierson while telling the producers at their luncheon about his days as a Scottish parson. The former NFB chief graduated from the Divinity College at Edinburgh University. He would preach in two churches on Sunday, riding from the first to the second on a motorbike. One Sunday he arrived at the second one well soaked, having driven through the rain. As he was changing into his vestments the senior clergyman offered him a drink of Scotch mist. A large drink. A drink large enough to cause the young parson to protest mildly that, after all, he was just about to step into the pulpit and he needed his wits about him. “Go ahead and drink it,’’ said the older one. “I would’na be trustin’ yer personal inspiration.” Page 5