Canadian Film Weekly (Jul 3, 1957)

Observanda 4 He fii hy WZ, ME Bik es . 4 i Le4/ b iy Vy Ze “THE TIME WILL come when they will be astonished to discover how they mar their own privileges by allowing themselves less liberty of speech and action than is enjoyed by the inhabitants of countries whose political servitude the Americans justly compassionate and despise.’ Those words weren’t written last week by an endorser of the U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting Congressional committees. They appear in the chapter of Society in America (1837) called The Idea of Honor. The writer of this very interesting two-volume study of the United States three generations after it became a nation was that unusual lady, Harriet Martineau . . . Jack Olsen, former NFB director and until recently with the Unesco film div ees in the Middle East, is with Maclean’s as a photo editor . . Ben Cronk, that grand old-timer of Canadian film business, has been hospitalized in Hollywood because of a bad heart since March. “Thank all in the business who ask about him,” his wife, Esther, wrote me.. .. Merrill Denison, who brought distinction to Canadian letters, will marry a Washington lady in early autumn, I hear. YANGTZE INCIDENT will be retitled Battle Hell by IFD. Did you know that Wee Geordie was Geordie until John Heggie, Famous Players’ booker, suggested the change? Every Scot and lover of things Scottish would be attracted by his suggested title, he insisted, so Doug Rosen of IFD went along and gave John $25 for the idea . . . British censor is using the poolroom principle—one foot on the floor—in passing seduction scenes .. . Will one of you MPAA lads call Eric Johnston’s attention to Nat Taylor’s Our Business in this edition? . . John Steinbeck, according to Leonard Lyons: “Writers are entertainers. They’re rated just above the seals and far below the clowns. If some, like Homer, turn out to be great, that’s fine and all to the good. But primarily, the writer is an entertainer” ... The USA’s two big problems — one internal and the other external—are segregation and the atomic bomb. That is, integration and disintegration . . . Perry Wright is with the CBC’s film accounting department. WHEN IT COMES to feature motion pictures in Canada, we haven’t got the writers because we haven’t got the pictures and we haven’t got the pictures because we haven’t got the writers. If we ever leave that situation behind, the Canadian screen writer will find that Canada is rich in literary treasure. There are the works of sentiment and outdoor adventure that used to be found in every Canadian home a generation ago—those of Ralph Connor. Ernest Shipman made The Man From Glengarry, The Sky Pilot and The Foreigner in Canada with domestic financing in the early 20’s. So popular were the books of Connor that Teddy Roosevelt, when president, was “‘de-e-elighted!” to meet him after the publisher, George H. Doran, introduced them in the White House. “I know your books,” Teddy told Connor. “I could pass an examination in Black Rock and The Sky Pilot.” Doran, a Torontonian, discovered Connor as a novelist and built his own great firm on those early books. The real name of Connor, who became a writer in our Northwest, was the Reverend Charles Gordon. In his autobiography, Chronicles of Barabbas, reissued in 1952, Doran devoted the chapter called A Modern Apostle to Connor. He wrote: “Like all of his contemporaries Ralph Connor enjoyed a certain vogue. He wrote of the West at a time when Western stories were in great demand the world over. He wrote with a fineness, a precision, a distinction, and an integrity. His West became the world’s West. He was resentful and somewhat embittered that he no longer held the heart and attention of his great and adoring public.” The West of Ralph Connor still lives in the motion picture feature drama. It still lives in television. He wrote more than 20 books, in which he proved that Canadian life had in it the materials of literature and drama that would interest anyone. It’s too bad that we aren’t making use of them today. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY July 1 & July 4 THE COMMON impression that USA trade with Canada is heavily in our favor is wrong. It’s as Judith Robinson wrote recently in The Telegram, Toronto: “‘We have the fact that 16,000,000 Canadians spend ten times the money in finished products from the USA that 170,000,000 Americans buy from Canada.” The trade expenditures of each country with the other are almost the same, though the USA’s population is ten times ours. The situation is similar in the case of tourism. These aren’t the only wrong impressions. Some years ago I twitted the head of a border city Variety Club about the Canadian dollar being worth more than the American one and he didn’t like it. “You Canadians weren’t so smart when we were giving you all that lend-lease,” he said. He meant it. This man actually thought Canada had received lend-lease from the USA during the war! However, the great American benefits to Canada are the protective proximity of the USA and the investment of $11,000,000,000 in our economic development in the last decade. COMING VISIT of the Queen to the United States brings to mind Abraham Lincoln’s sentiment about her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose birthday is still a national holiday in Canada. He wrote to the workingmen of Manchester, who had made known their sympathy with his cause, to thank them for their desire ‘that a spirit of amity and peace towards this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.” EVERYONE knows that George Washington was the leading figure in one of history’s greatest dramas, the American Revolution. But the American Revolution was only the sequel to a greater drama in which the same Washington was the key figure. Before the Revolution Washington, a 21-year-old lieutenant in the provincial forces, was sent by the Governor of Virginia to help British troops dispossessed from a fort by the French in the Ohio Valley, which was being claimed by both countries. The young officer surprised a small party of French soldiers and opened fire. Later France protested bitterly, claiming that it was a parley group, since the countries weren't at war. Of that order Withrow, in his History of Canada wrote: “It precipitated the earth-shaking conflict on the plains of India, on the waters of the Mediterranean and the Spanish Main, on the Gold Cost of Africa, on the ramparts of Louisburg, on the heights of Quebec, and here in the valley of the Ohio, which led to the utter defeat of the French, and the destruction of their sovereignty on this continent, and prepared the way for the independence of the United States. In the very beginning, as well as at the end, Washington was a prominent actor in the eventful drama, which became the epoch of a great nation.” What followed his order probably prepared Washington mentally for the events that made him immortal in history. General Braddock, the British commander against the French, declared provincial commissions inoperative when regular officers were available. He didn’t admire the native soldier. The slighted home-grown officer, out of whose small but motivating role in the first drama grew the events that made America British, became the star of the sequel. In the sequel Britain lost half of America, retaining the part called Canada. In Canada the nearest thing to an hereditary aristocracy are the descendants of those who rejected the American Revolution and fought against it — the United Empire Loyalists. Despite the picture of near-unanimity for the Revolution offered today, this sentence, from Roger Shaw’s Handbook of Revolutions, gives the real situation: “It has been estimated that one-third of the American population was revolution-minded, one-third was loyal to the king, and one-third was neutrally indifferent to the outcome if left alone.” So that Canadians, Britons and Americans have never been as far apart as some people like to make out. July 3, 1957 cat