Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 19, 1961)

News Clips Richard A. Cutler is now Ontario and Maritimes sales rep for Screen Gems (Canada) Ltd., Steve Krantz, v-p and g.m., announces . . The Bloody Brood, $100,000 Toronto-made production from Taylor-Roffman and directed by Julian Roffman, has finally been cleared for the Production Code seal by the Motion Picture Association of America . . . Visitor to Montreal and Toronto was Zinn Arthur, executive assistant to producer-director Joshua Logan for the production of the Broadway hit, Fanny. Zinn is touring to talk up the picture, which will be a WB release . . . Don Murray and Walter Wood, who co-produced UA’s The Hoodlum Priest, in which the former stars, were in Toronto for publicity contacts arranged by Archie Laurie . . Three out of six persons queried by the Toronto Star’s Ed Feeny as to whether burlesque should be allowed on Sunday said yes. The 83’x4l’ screen of the StarTime Drive-In at Prince George, BC has been replaced with a monster-sized one of 122’x54’. The Star-Time is owned by Trans-West Theatres and booked by West Coast Booking . . . Stratford Film Festival has announced six feature pictures for its Aug. 21-Sept. 2 occupation of Premier Operating’s Avon Theatre. They are Czechoslovakia’s Romeo, Juliet and Darkness, France’s Games of Love, Hungary’s Be Good Till Death, Yugoslavia’s The Missing Pencil, Greece’s A Matter of Dignity and Israel’s I Like Mike. Forty-eight countries were approached for films by John Hayes, Festival director, and many are responding . . . Production Code Administration of the MPAA issued certicates of approval to 72 features, a 22 per cent increase over the 59 okayed in 1960. Wally Gentleman of the National Film Board will read a paper titled Effect Technique as an Aid to Low-Budget Production at the forthcoming convention of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in Toronto . . « United Amusements’ theatre structure being erected in Dorval, Montreal suburb, will have a bowling alley . . . Toei Motion Picture Co. and the Victor Co. of Japan may jointly introduce Eidophor, the large-screen color television system which originated in Switzerland and which 20th Century-Fox has kept under wraps for several years . . . Home Entertainment, NTA’s new pay-TV system, was demonstrated in Los Angeles and franchises are in prospect in several USA cities . . . First issue of Performing Arts in Canada, published by J. C. McIntosh in Toronto, is now out. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Book It Now from OUR BUSINESS (Continued from Page 2) without ‘built-in values” to which the Hard Sell has been applied. We must never lose sight of the basic principles of Show Business. In today’s market the public must be “attracted” to a motion picture theatre. Day and night pounding with 50 different media (if there were that many) will not draw people to something which in itself is not basically attractive. These are the subjects which should be given the Hard Sell. Conversely, failure to sufficiently appraise a large segment of the public of a coming “attraction” may be foolhardy and costly. CANADA ON SCREEN CCO— FEATURETTES Produced by the National Film Board THE PRICE OF FIRE Scenes behind the headlines that no firefighter or audience will forget. AFFILIATED PICTURES * S\N (22 mins., b&w) E. W. Bickle, Wm. Jones, Vet BC Showmen, Dead Death took three Canadian motion picture exhibition people recently, the best known being Edward Bickle of Courtenay, BC, a one-time small-circuit operator, who passed away at 91 in Victcria. His son will operate the two Courtenay houses. Another veteran, Wm. Jones, who had managed Vancouver exchanges many years ago, died at 84, and at Coleman, Alta., W. J. C. Ferschweiler, manager of the Roxy, passed on at the age of 55. To Star In MGM's ‘Lady L' Sir Ralph Richardson has been signed to star with Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida in MGM’s Lady L. TRI-BELL CLUB SHOW BRINGS $9,000 About 3,000 persons who paid from $10 to $3 per ticket attended Tri-Bell ’61, the annual show of Toronto’s Tri-Bell Club, in the O’Keefe Centre, and helped bring $9,000 to Variety Village. The fine show, produced by Frank Strean, “Pud” Foster and Frank Naft, was headlined by singer Fran Warren and comedian Alan Gale. Others on the program were Arnold Dover, the Magid Triplets, the Kirby Stone Four and Larry Best, the last-named sharing the emcee chore with Rick Campbell of CFTO-TV’s Better Late program. President Sam Garnet, in presenting a cheque for the proceeds to Chief Barker Phil Stone of the Variety Club, praised the work at the Village. The show marked the 25th year of the Tri-Bell Club and a program of unusual excellence was distributed. Stories in it by Joe Perlove and Hye Bossin gave the respective histories and purposes of the Tri-Bell and the Variety clubs. The many shows of the Tri-Bell Club, Garnet’s anniversary message revealed, have resulted in $200,000 being donated to a var iety of causes. Strean, one of the producers of the show and a Tri-Bell past president, is First Assistant Chief Barker of the Variety Club. ACQUISITION of a 50 per cent interest in Talent Associates Ltd., the Alfred Levy-David Susskind TV production company, has been announced by Paramount Pictures, which will integrate its sponsored television activities in Talent Associates. The deal involved cash and an unspecified number of Paramount shares and is expected te eventually benefit Paramount’s Telemeter pay-TV system that Famous Players, a Paramount subsidiary, has been operating for over a year in a Toronto suburb and now has 5,700 subscribers in its first full-scale test. UNIVERSE, the NFB’s 29-minute short which won top awards from the British Film Academy and the Cannes festival, was produced and edited by Tom Daly, directed by Roman Kroiter and Colin Lew from a story line by Kroiter and has a commentary by Stanley Jackson narrated by Dr. Donald MacRae, professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto. The short is being released theatrically in Canada by Columbia Pictures in the Canada Carries On series. It has been shown on TV in Italy and was recently bought by the BBC. April 19, 1961 Review ALLINA NIGHT'S WORK with Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Cliff Robertson. Paramount 94 Mins. DIVERTING COMEDY PREDICATED ON A SLIGHTLY LONGER THAN CUSTOM. ARY STRETCHING OF THE LONG ARM OF COINCIDENCE AND ENGAGING PLEASANLY BUT NOT BOISTEROUSLY A CAST OF EXPERT PERFORMERS. Dean Martin and Shirley MacLain, memorably together in Some Came Running and in many a listing of the Sinatra group, pack more marquee muscle as_ topbilled in this Hal B. Wallis production than almost any pairing you could put together. They ride this not unforgettably funny comedy safely from a tittilating start through a long series of fairly predictable but amusing developments, some of them intrinsically funnier than the whole, to a climax that leaves the audience laughing happily. The attraction figures to earn a lot of money for all parties concerned. The picture, directed by Joseph Anthony from a script by Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin and Sidney Sheldon from a story by Margit Veszi and a play by Owen Elford, is beneficiary of the supreme Wallis talent for producing, the expert photography of Joseph LaShelle in today’s superb Technicolor and, crowning all these, the incomparable music of Andre Previn. In All in a Night’s Work Martin inherits a publishing concern whose honored owner has died in a fancy Florida hotel with a smile on his face at about the precise moment when MacLaine fled from his apartment clad in a bathtowel and was fleetingly observed by the house detective. The audience learns at once that she is a minor employee of the publishing firm, only accidentally near the place of death when the publisher passed on, but the house detective tells Martin the girl is out to blackmail him, and it takes from then to the picture’s end to clear up the mistake. CAST: Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Cliff Robertson, Charlie Ruggles, Norma Crane, Jerome Cowan, Gale Gordon. CREDIT: Producer, Hail B. Wallis; director, Joseph Anthony; screenplay, Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin, Sidney Sheldon; photography, Joseph LaShelle. DIRECTION: Satisfactory. PHOTOGRAPHY: Workmanlike. (From The Film Daily, NY) Zanuck's ‘Fate Is The Hunter’ Darryl Zanuck has _ acquired Ernest K. Gann’s best seller, Fate Is the Hunter. PROJECTIONIST WANTED For drive-in theatre situated on Lake Simcoe. Write— S. Scott, Pefferlaw, Ont. Phone: Pefferlaw 76-R-31