Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 23, 1959)

Christmas Number ferent interests and both were part of unhappy experiences by investors. The first was The Great Shadow, starring Tyrone Power (father of this generation’s Tyrone Power, who died recently), and Marguerite Snow and it played a couple of engagements at The Grand Opera House, Toronto, in the Spring of 1920. It is said that The Great Shadow was successfully distributed but its earnings were tied up by some of the many creditors, among them, players and technicians who had been contracted with a long-range view. The Adanac project vanished in a cloud of bad debts and a local Catholic priest, who represented a big piece of the investment, took charge of the property. Through the efforts of this priest, the local Member of Parliament and prominent citizens the Ontario Government was prevailed on in 1923 to take over the idle studio for its Provincial Motion Picture Bureau, a large and busy operation under George Patton. It had occupied space in the old Toronto World building, where part of Simpson’s stands now, and such old-timers as Bert Bach, Charlie Quick and George Rutherford moved to Trenton with it. In 1927 Canadian International Films, Ltd. was formed by W. F. Clarke, formerly of London, who interested prominent Torontonians, among them leading financiers. A fiveyear lease was obtained on the Trenton studio and a feature film, Carry On Sergeant, written and directed by Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather, was produced. A silent film, it coincided with the coming of the talkies and something like $500,000 was lost. This effort “to give Canada a place in an industry which now ranks as the third largest in the United States” also ended in debt and recrimination. The property has been a dyeing and finishing plant for many years now. For much of the information about the Adanac, and the Carry On Sergeant venture, I am indebted to Gordon Sparling, veteran Canadian director who worked on the film, and Walter Greene, now of The Hollywood Reporter’s ad department. PARLING, who lives in Montreal and was production chief for the old Associated Screen News organization, where he made the famed Canadian Cameos, was able to provide some interesting information on another production adventure of great scope, that of Ernest Shipman, an Ameri CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY ‘An OL_p Dream Come TRUE’ (Continued from Page 18) can. In 1929 Frank Badgley, director of the Dominion Government Motion Picture Bureau, wrote Sparling a letter with this Shipman data: “About 1917 or 1918 Shipman first organized a Canadian company in Calgary and Edmonton and made two films. One was called Cameron of the Mounted and I have forgotten the name of the other. These were distributed by a firm called Hodkinson which afterwards merged with Producers Distributing Corporation and were moderately successful, financially and otherwise. In 1921 or 1922 Shipman came to Canada and organized in Ottawa a company called Ottawa Film Productions Incorporated, and made two pictures, The Man From Glengarry and Glengarry School Days. These were distributed by the same Hodkinson firm but met with mediocre success, particularly Glengarry School Days, and those who put money into the company never got anything out of it. “While these films were being produced, Shipman moved on to Sault Ste. Marie where cA SSK ENE EEE LE EEE 2 Ee ae Ss BILTMORE THEATRES LTD. TORONTO EE ENE EE EE EEE EEE EEE NEE ETE ESE EI EEE EE LEE PETE PS PERE PA PEPE SPE PAP PS PAP PP PPP PRS i he organized a company and produced a film called, I think, The Rapids, with Harry Morey and Mary Astor in the leads. Whatever became of this film I don’t know. From Sault Ste. Marie Shipman jumped to Saint John, New Brunswick, Where he organized another company and produced a picture there from a Frederick William Wallace story featuring Norma Shearer. “If my memory serves me right, Shipman and his gang decamped before this picture was finished and all the stockholders have is what negative he shot which is now lying in a film vault in Saint John. “The Shipman crowd in Ottawa used the Rideau Skating Rink and one of the buildings at the Exhibition grounds as studios, using the old lighting equipment shipped east from their former western operations. In Sault Ste. Marie I believe they used a building belonging to the Algoma Steel Company. In Saint John they used a number of vacant buildings and their excuse for getting out of town was to finish K PEE EEE EEE EEE EEE PHOTO ENGRAVERS AND ELECTROTYPERS LTD. SSCP SA RCS PSE NRE RS EI Page 27 the studio pictures in New York.” Shipman’s pictures were distributed through an important exchange, First National, in which J. D. Williams, prominent in the silent days, was the leading figure. Williams was connected with the making of The Viking, starring Charles Starrett, in 1931 in Newfoundland and Labrador in aid of the work of Sir Wilfred Grenfell. This film was found some years ago in a fish storage plant in St. John’s, Newfoundland by Ralph Ellis, now of Fremantle Television but at the time with the National Film Board. GOME effort was made by the late Col. John A. Cooper, executive director of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association for many years, to gather a list of films made in Canada. There were a great many and names keep turning up. Walter Greene says a Galt group made a semi-war picture called something like The Maple Leaf Forever in 1916. Roy Tash, the veteran newsreeler, says he _ photographed a feature with Laurel and Hardy in Trenton and that a seven-reel feature, Satan’s Paradise, was made in the Loew’s Winter Garden, a Toronto roof theatre, in 1919 by the Canadian Aerial Film Co. and played the Tivoli. This company, in which Clifford Sifton was interested, became Filmcraft, which made two-reel comedies in Toronto and also had an unhappy ending, one element of which was a serious fire. Sparling, still a busy film maker, spoke on The Great Canadian Movie at the University of Toronto, during which he said: “I believe you agree with me that a nation’s culture is gauged by its movies, just as it is by its music and its painting, its books and newspapers. If that is so, then it is to everybody’s interest that Canada’s film production develop and prosper.” He ended his address with this quotation from Sir Alexander Korda: “Some have tried to make films a pulpit, but the substance and basis of the film industry is showmanship. I do not suggest that films should descend to mean intellectual qualities, but I must tell you in great confidence that there are few Shakespeares in the film industry—so far!” The new dreamers of the old dream, who built their studios with money earned in the industry they would serve share Korda’s view of things. Perhaps they will make an old dream come true, after all.