Canadian Film Weekly (Jun 5, 1957)

CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY June 5, 1957 ; On The Welcome Home? Typographs r) BEN CHECHIK, former BC exhibitor, sold his Australian drive-in to MGM and now operates one of the ten best hotels Down Under. Beer is a big thing there and Ben’s place has a 2,000-seat brew oasis. Brother Max, now in the equipment biz here, told me this at the Variety luncheon. At the monthly gab-and-eat get-together Nat Taylor announced the date of the annual Variety Village grad ceremonies: Tuesday, June 4 at VV, buffet dinner at 6.30... George Altman kicked in another $800 for his one-man scrap drive for Variety Village, bringing his hauled poundage to over a million and his total donation to $23,000 .. . Ted Reeve, commenting in The Telegram about the racing-car death of the rich Spaniard, Marquis de Portago, who took 13 of the watchers with him: “You would think (and for all we know maybe this was one of his other sides) he could have found a challenge in the conditions of his native country ... his own bailiwick, say the peasants thereof, to supply some more useful way of blowing the money, the time and finally the gift of life itself”... Explorations, the CBC hour-long TV show which originates in Toronto, will offer the history of the Canadian theatre from 1604 to 1915 on June 25. To be produced by Gordon Babineau and written mainly by Allen King, it will employ graphics and three actors, one of whom is Barry Morse. It ought to be worth while. Mavor Moore, actor and theatre historian, narrates the Explorations series. WHAT?’S WITH Telemeter here? There have been discussions between Gene Fitzgibbons and community antennae operators about future relationships. Discussions, not negotiations. Gene, Telemeter head, and J. J. Fitzgibbons, Sr., Famous Players’ president, will go to Hollywood some time in June for a look at a pilot plant and a demonstration of operational methods. What’s holding up Telemeter in Canada isn’t the need of permission from the authorities, as is the case across the line. As private broadcasting, it’s outside CBC jurisdiction. The air-link coinboxes won’t be available until the mass-manufacturing problem is settled and there’s no goahead without them . . . Observation: The tug-of-war for international political leadership is between Uncle Sam and Uncle Samovar . . . Skimpy-scalped man completing the morning spruceup was startled by the truth in a question by his watching tot: “Daddy comb his hairs?” . . . Forgotten on a Church Street bus: my nylon raincoat, bought at Dobbs in the Waldorf. Variety Club key with my name inscribed was among those in one pocket. The TTC lost-and-found man said, in a tone that mourned human morality: “We don’t get everything back.” EXHIBITORS can’t kick at the efforts of the producers and distributors to stir up interest in people due in their films. The press-radio-TV brigade got together with Sharman Douglas, here for IFD’s Yangtze Incident, Pat Boone, who has signed for a picture a year for seven years with 20th-Fox, and Gene Barry, star of China Gate, also from the second-named company. During the same week Warners introduced Andy Griffith, star of A Face in the Crowd. If hotel, food and liquor stocks go up soon it will be due to the film people . . . Got talking to the driver of Cab 305, Herbert Berresford, and learned that he just sold 50 per cent of seven patented inventions for $5,000 to a rich partner who promises development. One invention is an in-the-car tire-pressure gauge and another halts racing horses that run from the barrier in the opposite direction . . . CBC seems to feel the need to “televisionise” televised movies. It has Fred Davis uttering superficialities as intro and epilogue in the Great Films series . . . Should be plenty of nostalgic local material in Bea Lillie’s in-work autobiog, The Birds and the Bea. . . Joe Franklin was a quietspoken, keen-minded gentleman and a fine host. He served the industry with distinction in the Maritimes and I mourn his passing along with all who knew him and many who knew of him. ¥_ SQUAR te NS SOSSW | SO THEY’RE going to shoot the Tugboat Annie TV series in Toronto. I’ll bet Norman Reilly Raine, the writer who created the character and wrote the stories for the Saturday Evening Post, never dreamed that she would one day reach Toronto’s waterfront. Nor did Marie Dressler, who played the character in the movies. You see, Raine (one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters and an Oscar winner for his share of The Life of Emile Zola) is from Toronto and Marie Dressler was from Cobourg, a community not too far away. The news brought me the recollection of a day in 1938 when Jerry Wald, then a writer, walked me across the Warner lot to introduce me to Raine. I did an article about Raine that was published in Maclean’s, which had printed his first story. Raine, a Buffalo reporter at 18, crossed the border and enlisted in the Queen’s Own when World War I broke out and was, when I spoke with him, a reserve officer of the regiment attached to the Toronto garrison. The writer of Elizabeth & Essex, Captains of the Clouds, A Bell for Adano and many other films of distinction, I commented to Raine at the time that Canada had paid very little attention to his winning of the Oscar. “Canada seems to have less appreciation for Hollywood than Hollywood has for Canada,” he replied. “It appears that there exists an indifference at home to the doings of the film capital. They won’t take Hollywood seriously. Yet hundreds of Canadians work here in every branch of the industry and are thoroughly welcome. Dozens have distinguished themselves. The world honors them, but Canada pays little attention.” Hollywood was turning to Canada for material, he pointed out. Northwest Passage, in production, was the story of Rogers Rangers — the military ancestor of his own regiment, the Queen’s Own Rifles. Things have changed since then. Canada is very interested in its film people today. And they’re everywhere. It has often occurred to me that life is a forest and man a creature who, when lost in it, covers much ground but moves in circles. Isn’t that almost the case with Norman Reilly Raine and Tugboat Annie? In a way she’s back where she started from. _ Andy Griffith and Some Faces in the Crowd The star of the Warner Bros. feature, A Face in the Crowd, written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan, is a newcomer to films who is a former Broadway star, Andy Griffith, He visited Montreal and Toronto recently to meet press and trade people. Here, in Toronto, he is shown with E. G. Forsyth, assistant to the executive vice-president in charge of theatre operations for The Odeon Theatres (Canada) Limited, F. H. Fisher, and the director of buying and booking for that organization, W, E. H. Hunt ;