Canadian Film Weekly (Nov 6, 1957)

= yh 4 = \ ; November 6, 1957 Observanda SO GO KNOW. Charlie Chaplin told me that a Selznick double-bill of films shown on Vancouver TV stood them up a week later at the Studio Theatre. And here’s a switch: a TV station operator objected to being sold films that had played local theatres . . . Lorne Greene due on the Paramount lot for a brief stint in the De Mille-produced opus, The Buccaneers ... Jeanne Crain is the one who isn’t Ann Blyth and, says Alex Barris in The Telegram, Denise Darcel is the one who isn’t Corinne Calvet . . . I wish Maclean’s would forget about the out-of-focus school of color photography, as offered by John deVisser in his shots of Toronto. Guys my age aren’t sure if they’re seeing straight under the clearest conditions, so who needs this?.. . as How people talk! Davidson, The People’s Joyce, on Tabloid to Percy Saltzman: “Let’s you get to the weather.” There’s a new one: “Let us you...” ... The first child of Ken and Norah Johnson is a seven-pound-plus boy-o-boy. Congratulations. Dad is the Globe and Mailman .. . What will Bloor Street be like without Roher’s Book Store, always filled to overflowing with literary and journalistic riches from all parts of the English-speaking world? It won’t be there two months from now, for Harry Roher, one of Bloor Street’s best loved citizens, must retire because of his health, and he has leased the premises to another business. Roher’s Book Store, in other hands, will likely continue nearby. I know that not seeing Harry around so often will take some of the brightness from Bloor Street. He’s been there since the days when it was considered to be uptown. Then it became midtown. These days it’s downtown, St. Clair is midtown and Eglinton uptown. Harry did as much as anyone to bring people to Bloor Street and make it Toronto’s Fifth Avenue. When Harry took sick suddenly a couple of years ago he got more than 600 wires, cards and letters. How’s that for high regard? . . . Paul Nathanson, getting over a serious operation in a NY hospital. will recuperate in Palm Springs . . . Don Harron, one of our best young actors, was signed by Paramount. CANADIANS at the luncheon of George Award winners were preparing to be photographed with Mary Pickford. Her favorite cameraman, Charles Rosher, was standing near and she explained that we, like her, were Canadians. “I’m a Canadian myself,” said Rosher, who now lives in Jamaica. Coming to North America from Britain, he explained, his first home on this continent was with an aunt and uncle in Dresden, Ontario. Rosher, Mary recalled that evening on the stage of the Eastman Theatre, lensed her last picture and was the first cameraman in Hollywood to use lights in the daytime. Onstage Pickford mentioned that recently she had a party for the people who had been part of Hollywood in the silent era. Her husband, Buddy Rogers, said it should have been called an “‘O no! party.” A guest would see someone familiar and exclaim: “O no, it can’t be!” The brief remarks of General Solbert to open the proceedings on the stage were a rare combination of literacy and articulation. They were worth hearing and worth remembering. James Card’s comments were interesting and he observed that no Chaplin excerpt would be seen, since that provocative gentleman was still nursing his “cosmic grouch.” Those who came from Toronto to take in the proceedings were Stan and Beth Helleur, Jan and Lou Applebaum, George Patterson, Clyde Gilmour, Gerald Pratley and Elwood Glover. They were made most welcome by General Solbert, Beaumont Newhall, the curator, and Card. Press tasks were made easier by Card’s assistant, George Pratt. The George Eastman House, named in honor of the founder of Kodak, is a remarkable institution. A very interesting time awaits anyone who will invest a couple of hours in this museum and treasure house of photography, still and moving. To be a mere few hours away and not to visit it is to deprive yourself of a rare experience. Civilization owes much to the man it commemorates and to the art it upholds. é cfyapian FILM WEEKLY On The Ky Vd ‘wilh NS DOSSW | Page 5 Rochester SQUAR ALL HONOR to the George Eastman House for bringing back to our hearts and minds the cinematic glories and glorious of 1926-30 through its Second Festival of Film Artists —“the world’s only retrospective film awards,” as the director of the GEH, General George N. Solbert, described the occasion to a capacity audience in the large Eastman Theatre, Rochester. There, in one long row on the stage, sat 17 of the 32 winners of the George Award, as the medal of honor is called, these having been selected by 600 of their contemporaries of 1926-30 from the living artists, directors and cameramen who worked in that period. As Rouben Mamoulian, a Rochester home-towner who was chairman of the Festival Committee and master of ceremonies, said in the course of the proceedings: ‘‘We don’t have award winners, we have collectors.” He was referring to those of the eight chosen in each category who had been awarded the medal of honor two years earlier for their accomplishments in 1915-25. There were three among the actresses (Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Gloria Swanson), four among the actors (Ronald Colman, Richard Barthelmess, Harold Lloyd and Charles Chaplin), three among the directors (Cecil B. De Mille, Frank Borzage and John Ford) and three among the cameramen (Lee Garmes, Charles Rosher and Arthur Edeson). The first-time winners were Greta Garbo, Janet Gaynor, Clara Bow, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer among the actresses; William Powell, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Ramon Navarro and Maurice Chevalier among the actors; King Vidor, Frank Capra, Clarence Brown, Frank Lloyd and Joseph Von Sternberg among the directors; and James Wong Howe, William Daniels, George Folsey, Peverell Marley and Hal Mohr among the cameramen. Joan Crawford and her husband, Al Steele, came to the pre-lunch cocktail party at the Genesee Valley Club but left Rochester before the ceremonies. Those who were brought to the centre of the stage with sentimental and humorous words by Mamoulian to receive the homage of their erstwhile colleagues and the audience were Gaynor, Pickford, Gish, Swanson, Novarro, Chevalier, Barthelmess, Harold Lloyd, Von Sternberg, Borzage, Howe, Daniels, Folsey, Marley, Garmes, Rosher and Edeson. The ceremonies followed a welcome by General Solbert, after which James Card, motion picture curator for the GEH, introduced each excerpt from a number of films. First came Barthelmess, his vigor of voice and body a defiance of time. Borzage noted that usually ‘“‘you’re as good as your last picture” but that the award would help him remember the smell of the flowers. “France is famous for its history, vintage wines and Maurice Chevalier,” said Mamoulian. And the wonderful Frenchman came on to touch the audience with his expression of gratitude to Mary Pickford and the first Douglas Fairbanks for paving his way to Hollywood, after which he confessed that he was 69 and that, if he gets his next award in Heaven, he would marry an angel. Gaynor, from where I sat still the angelic Gaynor of Borzage’s Seventh Heaven and other films, was welcomed by Mamoulian with: “Long may you walk in beauty, Janet.” He called on her husband, Adrian, to take a bow in the audience. Lillian Gish had a “translucent quality” and to him she “has never been quite real,” he said. She assured the audience that she was and praised her screen contemporaries for having “lifted the industry into something of dignity and importance.” James Wong Howe recalled being tired after many hours of shooting on De Mille’s Gloria Swanson starrer, Male and Female. It was a long way home at that hour and he decided to sleep in a bed that had been used in one of Gloria’s scenes instead. “I don’t know what kind of perfume Miss Swanson uses,” he recalled blissfully, “but it was wonderful.” Then came Miss Swanson, “the Queen of Hollywood,” to accept her award. “I have to thank you wonderful people out there.” (Continued on Page 8)