Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 24, 1958)

Page scan 0000 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Dec 24, 1958
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 24, 1958)
Leaf #:
0000
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Film Industry Trade Magazine",Canad
Collection:
Canada, Hollywood Studio System, and Global Cinema
Format:
periodicals
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library, Canadian Picture Pioneers, Paul Moore and Jessica Whitehead
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:

Canadian Film Weekly

  • Editor: Hye Bossin (1942-64)
  • Renamed Canadian Film & TV Bi-Weekly (1965-69, editor: Stan Helleur)
  • Renamed Candian Film Weekly(1970, editor: Ed Hocura)

Canadian Film Weekly (1942-70) was edited by Hye Bossin and published by Film Publications of Canada, Ltd., wholly owned by leading exhibitor, Nat Taylor. In the late 1930s, Taylor was head of the Independent Theatre Association and his Toronto-based chain, Twinex-Century (Twentieth Century), was the largest independent circuit in the country. In 1941, however, he negotiated for chain affiliation with upstart Canadian Odeon before leveraging a better deal and greater booking control with nationally-dominant Famous Players Canada, Ltd. No longer independent, he took ownership of the Independent Theatre Association’s semi-monthly magazine, The Canadian Motion Picture Exhibitor (1940-41), installed Hye Bossin as editor, and laid plans to relaunch in January 1942 under a new name, Canadian Film Weekly. This enduring key publication was no longer solely focused on independent exhibitors but instead covered the entire industry on a national scale–exhibition, distribution and production–with some attention given to studio news from New York and Hollywood.

Bossin was a vibrant writer with a canny way with words, admired in the industry in the United States as well as Canada. He was one of a large family who lived above their father’s secondhand shop in the Jewish “ward” downtown in Toronto. His older brother was a bookie with ties to the underground; his younger brother was a famous journalist, protégé of Walter Winchell, and Hollywood screenwriter. In contrast, Hye spent nearly two decades learning the publishing trade in a printers’ shop before trying a stint as a Hollywood publicist, then writing a column for the Toronto Star Weekly before taking Taylor’s offer to edit the Film Weekly. Bossin was central to the creation of the Canadian Film Archive, the Canadian Film Awards, and he wrote some of the first histories of early cinema in Canada, published in the first volumes of the annual Canadian Film Weekly Year Book (1951-70).

In 1957, the Film Weekly had incorporated the rival Canadian Moving Picture Digest (1917-57), and began dating its start to that paper’s earlier start as the Canadian Universal Bulletin (1915-18). Subsequent variants of the Canadian Film Weekly and its yearbooks always claimed their roots all the way back to 1915 and the origins of the film industry trade press in Canada. After Bossin died in 1964, the Weekly’s new editor, Stan Helleur, renamed the magazine Canadian Film & TV Bi-Weekly, scaling back the pace of publishing but adding a purview for television and broadcasting. The annual was renamed similarly, its subtitle amended to “Year Book of the Canadian Entertainment Industry.” An attempted renewal to weekly format in 1970, edited by Ed Hocura, was short-lived and Nat Taylor decided instead to relaunch under an entirely new title, Canadian Film Digest (1971-77) and Canadian Film Digest Yearbook (1971-86).

– Paul Moore, March 2024

Further Reading

  • Bossin, Hye. “Canada and the Film: The Story of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry.” In Canadian Film Weekly Year Book of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry, 21-41. Toronto: Film Publications of Canada, 1951.
  • Moore, Paul. “Chronicling a National History: Hye Bossin’s Canadian Film Weekly and Year Book.” In Eric Hoyt and Kelley Conway, eds., Global Movie Magazines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024.

Date Added:
August 15, 2024
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Toronta Christmas, 1950 Canada HEN the Christmas Carol was played at the THA Adelphi, with Toole as Bob Cratchit, much realism was got out of the Cratchit Christmas dinner scene, a real roast goose and a real plum-pudding being served up hot every night. Tiny Tim was played by a somewhat emaciated little girl, who sat by the fireside and was fed with dainty morsels by the other little Cratchits, who clustered about the dinner-table, and who, needless to say, were as willing to play as good a knife and fork on the stage as they are supposed to do in the book. “OF all the little Cratchits, however, this Tiny Tim proved the most voracious. Like his famous young relative Oliver Twist, he always wanted more, and night after night such large portions of goose and plumpudding were handed to this exacting and hungry little invalid, that even the good-natured Toole grew annoyed, feeling that the poetry of the scene was being missed, and at last became absolutely angry with the child for its supposed gluttony. Being at length taken to task on the subject, poor Tim made a confession. The child had a sister (a not too well-fed sister) employed in the theatre. The fire by which it sat was a stage fire, through which anything could be easily conveyed to one waiting on the other side, and poor little Tim’s goose and pudding were more than shared each night. When Toole told this story to Dickens he was greatly touched, and said: ““T hope you gave the child the whole goose’.” Cartes DICKENS AND THE STAGE T. E. Pemberton, London, 1888. Tiny Tim: ‘Gov Bless Us Every One!’