Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 27, 1961)

Page scan 00025 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Dec 27, 1961
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Dec 27, 1961)
Leaf #:
00025
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Film Industry Trade Magazine",Canad
Collection:
Global Cinema, Canada, and Hollywood Studio System
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 08, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Page 26 Typographs TWICE-TOLD TALES: Many years ago an immigrant lady from Russia gave birth to her first child en route from Liverpool to Halifax on a ship named St. Cecelia. The captain gave her a good-luck coin and it bounced around in her purse for a couple of years. By now she knew Canadian money but this coin wasn’t like anything -she’d seen anywhere else. Came a time when /| things were tough. Two kids had been added to the two she had brought with her and the one born aboardship. One day, buying for the | brood, she put the captain’s coin together with some others to pay the grocer something — on account. The good-luck coin, she learned ; suddenly, was a $20 gold piece! The lady was my mother, the child born on board my brother Dave and my sister Celia is named for the ship. Rest well, good captain. The story of my mother’s good-luck coin came back to me when I read about gold coins becoming popular as jewellery . . . Le Roy Prinz, in a note: “Three trips to Japan last year. I had so many baths my dog didn’t know me when I got home”... A young lady tore up an income tax letter. ‘They won’t bother me any more,” she 299 explained. “This one said ‘Final Warning’. THE GENEROUS use of their talents by theatre people is a tradition. These stanzas are from Lines, which appears in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Poems. It is prefaced with, “Spoken by Miss Ada Rehan at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune’s Holiday Fund for City Children” and followed by “Saville Club. Midnight, July 1890.” The stanzas: Before we part to alien thoughts and aims, Permit the one brief word the occasion claims: —When mumming and grave motives are allied, Perhaps an Epilogue is justified. Dear friends—now moved by this poor show of ours To make your own long joy in buds and bowers For one brief while the joy of infant eyes, Changing their urban murk to paradise— You have our thanks! — may your reward include More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude. A. P. HERBERT wrote a poem, Fifty Years, dedicated to the great British showman, Charles B. Cochran, for Punch. Two of the verses: Alas, how little can the actor keep Of all the joys he lavishly distils! Some faded programmes in the scrap-book sleep— A few old photographs—and many bills. ‘Who was the man in that delightful play?’ ‘Who was the girl who took the leading part?’ Well, never mind. For she has had her day, And lives in lodgings with a broken heart. THIS, I’M TOLD, is an old English prayer that dates back to the 18th Century. It’s called Man’s Good Everyday Prayer: Give me a good digestion, Lord, and also something to digest‘ Give me a healthy body, Lord, with sense enough to keep it at its best. Give me a healthy mind, good Lord, to keep the good and pure in sight, Lis Meaaiole sin, is not appalled but finds a way to set it right. Give me a mind that is not bound; that does not whimper, whine or sigh; Don’t let me worry over much about the fussy thing called I. Give mee sense Of humour, Lord: give me the grace to see a joke; To get some happiness out of life and pass it on to other folk. CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Christmas Number Observanda The Way We Are BABY SON of a friend of mine was frightened by a playful pup that ran up to him suddenly. The next day, while baby happened to be sitting on the floor playing with a shovel, poppa put a toy pup with a mechanical movement down in front of him. Instinctively the baby swung the shovel and flattened the toy. nthe SQUARE TAILOR I KNOW saw an overage local loverboy going by and called out to him, saying that the try-ons for his suits were ready. The customer came over with an embarrassed smile, shook his head, whispered something and went on his way. “He can’t try his suits on,” the tailor said when the customer had departed. ‘‘He isn’t wearing his girdle today.” IN THE 20’s I saw a cartoon of a fellow carrying a megaphone for singing in the Rudy Vallee manner who was explaining that he was a crooner. “Third floor,’”’ said the receptionist. Next panel showed the guy in the elevator. The last panel showed him looking out of the elevator into the third floor — which was crowded with guys carrying megaphones. Today all you have to do to make that cartoon funny again is show a guy carrying a guitar who calls himself a folk singer. Is folk singing a substitute for talent? I WAS AT an interview of Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty on the Warner lot after a screening of Splendor in the Grass, in which they play some very hot love scenes. A European newspaperman rose and, referring to these scenes, asked Beatty where the line is drawn between technique and emotion. Beatty, clever about his answer, said, “There is a technique of emotion.’’ Now I read that he’ll probably marry Natalie Wood. I guess emotion triumphed over technique. BOWLING ALLEYS give a $50 prize for a perfect game. One day an Italian who could hardly speak English entered the Roseland Bowl, which is operated by Mike Morrison. He asked for an explanation of the game, saying that he was quite good at the Italian bowling pastime, Bocce, and would like to try this one. He rolled 12 straight strikes for 450 and was surprised at getting $50 for something that easy. Maybe he thought he got the money by mistake, for he never showed up again! A LADY was telling me something about her four-yearold son. He suddenly set up a clamor for a razor, presumably out of a desire to imitate daddy. They got him a toy razor— and he began using it on his legs. ___ IVE NEVER ADMIRED the peace-at-any-price practitioners. I’ve sometimes seen a boss end a difference between two executives when it should have been pursued in the best interests of the firm. I got a kick out of this from the Commentary: “In the old days, when rabbis were really rabbis, one of them told a plaintiff he was right. Then, having heard the defendant, he told him he was right. When the rabbi’s wife objected that both could not be right, the rabbi told her she was right.” RUTH COHEN, the one-time Paramount girl, told me about the time she was walking down Yonge St. and one of the Imperial’s pigeons reargunned one of her gloves. She took the other off, rolled them up and dropped both in the gutter. Soon she heard cries of “Miss! Miss!” from a man hurrying towards her. As he came through the crowd puffing, he held out something, saying, “You dropped your gloves, miss.’ Ruth took them, thanked him sweetly, went on her way and hung on to them until she passed a trash can. She made sure that the gallant idn’ fama & gentleman didn’t see her drop