Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 20, 1970)

Page scan 0002 from Canadian Film Weekly

Record Details:

Title:
Canadian Film Weekly
Date:
Mar 20, 1970
Volume:
Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 20, 1970)
Leaf #:
0002
Language:
English
Collection:
Hollywood Studio System, Global Cinema, and Canada
Format:
periodicals
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library, Canadian Media Magazines Project, 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:
April 11, 2024
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MARCH 20, 1970 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 3 ITS MY BAG By Ed Hocura No one ever thought that George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion would be a success as a musical. But My Fair Lady went on to become a memorable stage and movie hit. No one ever thought that Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist would lend itself to being transformed into a musical. But Lionel Bart proved it could be done, and Columbia Pictures turned Oliver! into one of the best screen musicals of all time. Even those older moviegoers with fond memories of seeing the late Robert Donat and Greer Garson in the 1939 version of Goodbye Mr. Chips had little to object to in the musical version of the James Hilton novel, with Peter O’Toole deservedly nominated for an Academy Award as best actor of the year. Is there no limit to what Hollywood could do if they decided to turn other classic novels into screen musicals? Could they set Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mutiny On The Bounty or A Tale Of Two Cities to music? Dr. Jekyll, a respected London physician, concocts a mysterious potion that transforms him into a diabolical villain. Mr. Hyde befriends a streetwalker whose mother chides her daughter for bothering with such an evil man. The daughter holds up Hyde’s picture, gazes mournfully at it and starts to sing: “I’ve grown accustomed to his face .. .” Captain Bligh is the most hated officer in the British Navy. His first officer on HMS Bounty is Fletcher Christian, a man the sailors choose to lead them in mutiny. When Bligh is set adrift in the ocean in a small boat, and his crew prepares to set sail for Tahiti, he vows he will spend the rest of his life tracking them down and see them all go to the gallows. As Christian bids Bligh farewell, he breaks into song: “How deep is the ocean . . .” Sidney Carton is a brave Englishman whose love for a married woman leads him to risk his life to save the woman’s husband by changing places with him in a French prison. As the prison cart approaches the gallows, and the guillotine is shown glistening in the sun, Carton prepares to go bravely to his death. And as he mounts the gallow steps, he sings: “What kind of fool am I? . . . If MGM decided to film Edison The Man as a musical, the big finale song could be: “I’m beginning to see the light . . .” Fox’s musical version of Alexander Graham Bell might have the inventor of the telephone singing into his invention: “Hello young lovers, wherever you are...” While I think all of these classic films could easily be turned into movie musicals, I wouldn’t want to see MGM try it with Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O’Hara at the end singing: “You made me love you, I didn’t want to doit...” * * * NAMES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT: Dorothy Mikos now joins the long, long list of movie reviewers who found working for the Toronto Star a brief period in their lives. After only three months, and it hardly seems a reasonable tenure, she was dropped. Veteran broadcaster Gordon Sinclair had some nice things to say about Miss Mikos’ ability on one of his Show Business with Sinclair shows of CFRB . . . Carol Channing can’t help but attract one of the biggest luncheon crowds in years when she will be a special guest at the Mar. 26 meeting of Variety Club of Ontario, Tent 28. Currently wowing the customers at the O’Keefe Centre, everybody’s favorite blonde should make the luncheon a not-tobe-missed affair . . . It will be good to see Chet Friedman again when he flies in from Cincinnati this week to help Al Dubin co-ordinate the Warner Bros. world premiere of Woodstock. Friedman made a lot of friends during the years he toiled in Toronto for MGM and Allied Artists . . . Director Robert Altman couldn’t be happier that the U-S. Army has banned M-A-S-H from being shown at any of its army and air force installations. “It proves my whole picture valid,” Altman is reported as saying. “It’s antiwar, not antiarmy, and you kind of hope the army would be antiwar, too. Every soldier in uniform who gets a three day pass is going to see M-A-S-H now.” 20th Century-Fox can only hope that Altman is right. Especially when you consider how many army and air force installations there are all over the world . . . Happy to hear that Genevieve Bujold has stopped talking about being in favor of Quebec separating from the rest of Canada. This she always did when she first began giving out newspaper interviews, prior to being nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Anne Of The I couldn’t bear to see Rhett Butler leaving © RECORDING SESSION — Film personality Ed Begley recently visited Toronto’s Soundmix Recording Studio for the purpose of recording voice over narration track for a film called A Connecticut Yankee in Mark Twain’s House, one of a series of Mark Twain stories for a program which is shown on U.S. television. Shown here, discussing a point in the script, are Terry Cook, right, president and chief soundmixer at the mixing console, Begley, centre, and Feter Shewchuk, assistant mixer. Soundmix Ltd. is a new motion picture sound service located at 65 Front Street East in Toronto. Thousand Days. Could be someone important at Universal took her aside and told her to leave political feelings out of interviews . . . There are times when a distributor must wonder how two critics could have opposing views of the same film. Take Airport, for example. The Globe and Mail’s Martin Knelman referred to it as “a movie of such awesome banalities as to make any flight unendurable and intermineable.” The Toronto Telegram’s Clyde Gilmour called it ‘a good, solid entertainment for people of all ages.” In the final analysis, however, good or bad reviews for Airport won’t sway too many people one way or the other. After reading Arthur Hailey’s novel, they made up their minds that they were going to make a point of seeing the movie . . . Len Bishop, the film industry’s answer to Yousuf Karsh, will have more than photography to keep him occupied in the next few months. Famous Players has called upon him to handle group ticket sales during the Hollywood Theatre engagement of A Boy Named Charlie Brown. He should do his usual superlative job. POPULAR FELLOW — Len Bishop was surprised to say the least when he was tendered a cocktail party by 25 Famous Players theatre employees in Toronto recently. The party was held at the Hollywood Theatre, where Bishop was manager for many years before he retired last December. Bishop was presented with a portable typewriter; Mrs. Bishop was presented with a gift of china. Shown above are Allan Bell, who succeeded Bishop as manager of the Hollywood; Bishop; Miss Vera St. Edward, a Famous Players cashier for over 40 years, and Miss Dorothy St. Edward, manager of the Crest.