Canadian Film Weekly Year Book of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry (1952)

FACTS ABOUT EXHIBITION FRENCH-LANGUAGE houses: Quebec theatres snowing only French films in 1951 numbered 72, one more than in 1950 and 38 more than in 1949. Those playing motion pictures in both English and French dropped from 134 in 1950 to 119 in 1951 and those offering English-language films exclusively jumped from 183 to 234. Several importers offer exhibitors films produced in France and the other exchanges provide dubbed versions of Hollywood films. Of the 11 feature films produced in Canada by local companies since 1949, nine were in French and these obtained almost 100 per cent of their Canadian grosses from exhibition in Quebec. THEATRE TOWNS: There were 1,196 communities with 35 mm. theatres and 173 with 16 mm. houses. In addition, there were 374 communities in Canada which had halls with 16 mm. projection equipment, but these halls are listed separately because they are used for other purposes besides the showing of films. ATTENDANCE: An Unesco survey says that tne average Canadian attends movies 17 times per year, placing him seventh among the countries. While the average attendance did not change over the previous year, Canada’s position dropped from fifth to seventh. Israel leads all countries with 38, second is Costa Rica with 30, third is Great Britain with 29, fourth is Australia with 25, fifth is the USA with 22 and New Zealand is sixth with 18. Israel and Costa Rica, which were behind Canada in average theatregoing, jumped to first and second place and the USA which was first with 32 the year previous slumped badly, reflecting the boxoffice crisis at that time. COMMUNITY SHOWS: In 1950 138 35 mm. theatres and 448 16 mm. ones were operated as non-profit enterprises in churches and halls by religious, service and fraternal organizations, as well as Boards of Trade. In the latter case desire to keep the citizens in their own community for week-end shopping, instead of visiting larger nearby places with theatres, has caused shopkeepers to sponsor these shows. 58 PER CAPITA EXPENDITURE: The per capita expenditure for theatregoing in Canada in 1950 was $7.12, a record which compares with $6.89 in 1949, $6.50 in 1948, $5.77 in 1945 and $5.01 in 1942. Ontario led the provinces with a per capita expenditure of $9.11, then came British Columbia with $8.47, Alberta with $7.18, Quebec and Manitoba each with $6.20, Nova Scotia with $5.57, Saskatchewan with $4.84, New Brunswick with $4.40, Prince Edward Island with $3.79 and Newfoundland with $2.93. CAPACITY UTILIZED: There was a drop from 30.7 per cent in 1949 to 30.0 per cent in 1950 in the total number of admissions sold as against the maximum possible. The “capacity utilized” potential is obtained by multiplying the number of seats in each theatre by the number of performances and cumulating the results, which totalled 772,961,404. In 1950 the capacity utilized was the lowest since 1940, the highest having been 1946, when the figure was 37.6. LEGITIMATE THEATRES: It is hard to define legitimate and other theatres offering live entertainment for the purposes of statistics and the 1950 report of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics did not carry any—contrary to past practice. However, the DBS will report them in its 1952 census as one class of business. The difficulty arises from the mixture of entertainment. Some motion picture theatres had a small amount of legitimate theatre business and some primarily-legitimate theatres show motion pictures periodically. There are also the vaudeville-film houses of Montreal and Toronto and the auditoriums which offer concerts mainly. PAYROLL: The collective wages and salaries of 13,866 employees in the 1,801 regular theatres of 1950 amounted to $15,640,372, while 36 film distribution companies paid their help $2,896,622. LANGUAGE: Of the 1,444 35 mm. films listed by the DBS as “New Films Released, 1950” in all languages, 1,253 were in English, 173 in French and 18 in others. The 2,174 16 mm. films had 1,788 in English, 384 in French and 12 in other languages.