Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 23, 1957)

October 23, 1957 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 5 Short Throws STRATFORD Shakespearean Festival touring troupe of 20 players, which will offer the German comedy, A Broken Jug, and Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, will open its three-month tour in London, Ontario on February 12. After engagements at the Royal Alexandra in Toronto and Her Majesty’s in Montreal the company will move into the Phoenix, New York, for a six-week stand. Michael Langham will stage both plays and Tanya Moiseiwitsch will design them. MICROWAVE experiment of 20th Century-Fox’ theatre television system, during which a 45-minute program was transmitted from the Park Sheraton Hotel studios to the Pilgrim Theatre in the Bronx, indicated its possibilities to representatives of CBS, General Electric, TelePrompTer and NTA. The Roxy acts used came through in excellent color and definition, although it was admitted that the 23x28-ft. image wasn’t as good as film. Spyros Skouras, who will join his associates in discussing the future use of Eidophor this week, mentioned the possibility of David O. Selznick producing a live version of Gone With the Wind for national telecasting into theatres over Eidophor. LETTER to the editor of The Montreal Star by ‘“‘Television Fan” insisted that it was unfair of the CBC to take up Saturday night hours with hockey when viewers would rather see movies. It drew a reply signed “‘A. R. B.” in which it was suggested that a vote would favor hockey. The correspondence indicates what movies mean to television now. VARIETY Village will get more than $6,000 from the operation of the parking lot at Molson’s Brewery, across the way from the Toronto Maple Leaf Stadium. The 1957 gross, like that of 1956, was kept high because the brewery underwrote the cost of operating the lot. FINANCE Minister Fleming, in the first estimates of the Progressive Conservative government, tabled an item for $8,100,000 to meet the anticipated operating deficit of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and finance some of its capital projects. That brings to $43,350,000 the money the CBC has drawn from the public treasury. Another item was $16,000 to meet the expenses of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, usually referred to as the Fowler Commission. To Direct WB's ‘Footprints’ William Wellman will direct Warners’ Footprints. Seer Se S gaff WE OOSSIN rex lOnThe WB SQUARE MEANT TO mention that the recent $250,000 fire on the 15th floor of the Royal Bank Building separated the men from the boys at Famous Players, which occupies layers 13 and 14. It knocked the elevators out. Some FP folks, faced with the climb, returned home. Others hiked up. Bert Brown, Tom Chatfield and Jules Wolfe were clever about it. They took the elevator in the next building to the seventh floor, crossed the roof to the RBB and made FP via the fire escape . . . Have you noticed the number of baldheaded and grey-haired men who are now wearing those flat-topped hats? Until recently these covered only youthful conks. A mutual acquaintance of our generation went by wear “ ing one and Jim Nairn observed: ‘‘He looks like a 100-year-old juvenile” . . . MGM’s Raintree County junket-type premiere, “a fantastic splash” for press and public, was without Canadian cinema reporters. None was invited . . . I suppose the wisecrackers of these days, like those of ’23 and ’39, will refer to the picture as The Hunchback Who Knows a Dame. Incidentally, HND grosses in Quebec— where it had a 20-theatre saturation premiere worked out by AA’s Jack Bernstein—are sensational . . . Liveliest interviewee in a long time was that provocative Gaul, Denise Darcel, here for a fashion extravaganza through which Libby, McNeill and Libby were pushing my favorite beans and tomato juice. She had an ask-me-anything-but-anything approach to the press. FLAMENCO, it seems to me after experiencing the exciting stomping and wailing of Carmen Amaya’s superb troupe at Eaton’s Aud, can be described humorously as Spanish Rock ’n’ Roll. The unseen hero of a Flamenco company is its shoemaker. In the Gardner Museum, Boston, there hangs the finest painting of these dancing gypsies, Sargent’s El Jaleo. Once seen, never forgotten . . . Gillette World Series telecast allowed local stations two of their own commercials. So the CBC used one for that anti-blade Schweppes pedlar, Cdr. Whitehead, who flaunts a gorgle-hiding beard . . . Les Girls is a screamezvous. A woman at the Loew’s owler said for women it’s the funniest film since The Women. It has even more to offer men — three live beauts .. . As Sinatra looks at the Wm. Morris listing on a building directory in The Joker Is Wild one detects that some Hollywood lad has exercised his San Quentin sense of humor. A nearby listing is of the Quail Hunters League... An hour-long good variety show is better than three fair half-hour ones. That seems to be CBC supervisor Bob McGall’s reasoning in planning the new Wayne & Shuster program, which also offers the immensely pleasing singers, Denny Vaughan and Joan Fairfax. I think that’s good thinking. LESTER PEARSON has become the first Canadian to win the Nobel Peace Prize. There’s added satisfaction in that for certain gentlemen of the Variety Club of Toronto, which was invited last year to name a nominee for the Humanitarian Award of the Variety Clubs International. These gentlemen agreed that Pearson deserved to be among the proud company of those honored previously, which includes Churchill, Baruch, Hoover, Marshall and Hull, and Chief Barker Nat Taylor made this known to the committee. “His contribution to limiting dangers of international conflict inherent in recent disturbances and reinstating unity of views among nations affected by them has enhanced his reputation as a diplomat solely interested in peace and progress of all nations,” Taylor wrote of Pearson. The committee, however, made a choice that Pearson would endorse himself—that of Dr. Albert Schweitzer . . . Jack and Florence Chisholm visited Williamsburg and Jamestown while on vacation. In Williamsburg Jack, a director and cameraman, had a great experience. He watched shooting on Walt Disney’s Cyclorama for the USA display at the Brussels exhibition. This will be movies in a complete circle and 11 cameras, synchronized with a circular shaft, operated at once after seven cameramen okayed the light readings. Projection will be by the same method and the viewers will walk around the auditorium. News Clips Marcel Gaudart, European documentary producer now living in Canada, has nearly completed The Secret of Karsh, a film about the famed Ottawa photographer . . . Since March 15, 1955, the 1,207seat Teck Theatre in Buffalo has played to 1,168,796 admissions for three features, the take being over $2,000,000. The fourth film, Search for Paradise, is running now . . . Odeon Theatres observed British Film Week during the Queen’s visit by playing an English picture in each situation. Amusement tax brought the Province of Quebec $2,749,765 in 1956-7 compared with $2,842,971 the previous year, indicating a decline in business ... Victor, Wilfrid and Rosaire Trahan, owners of three businesses in Grand’Mere, Quebec, have purchased the Palace and National Theatres from Dr. J. E. Guibord and will operate them through Grand’Mere Cinemas Inc. Wilfrid is president, Rosaire vice-president and Victor secretary. S. W. Caldwell of S. W. Caldwell Limited, Toronto, and N. R. Olding, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Montreal, attended the recent meeting of the Association of Film Laboratories in Philadelphia. A set of recommended practices for handling film material for general use was discussed. The next meeting will be held in New York on January 17. A Canadian lab standards committee was organized recently. Five teenagers appeared in a Fort William court for assaulting theatre doorman Walter Fleming . . . Classified as Adult Entertainment in Ontario are Black Scorpion, Chicago Confidential, Death in Small Doses, From Hell It Came, Girl in the Black Stockings, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Living Idol, My Gun Is Quick, Passionate Stranger, Street of Sinners, Valerie and Woman of the River . . . Warners just gave dismissal notices to 45 advertising and publicity staffers on the Coast and in New York. Community TV Firm Incorporated In Ont. Cornwall Cable Vision Limited, a private company with head office in Cornwall, has been granted Letters Patent of Incorporation by the Ontario Government “‘to carry on generally the business of a community television antenna system.”’ Names connected with the incorporation are Bernard, Elie and Yvon Bertrand and _ authorized capital is $40,000, divided into 100 preference shares with a par value of $100 and 300 common shares with a par value of $100.