Cinema Canada (Dec 1977-Jan 1978)

SPOT LIGHT musicians. But today, I don’t argue because they can go and pick up a group with all of the amplifiers and everything, and with 2 pieces they can make enough goddam noise to blow the bar out. When did you open the Casino theatre? In ’36. But before that, when I came back, I was working for the Allens in the comedy gift night. That was just after the Depression, you know, when we couldn’t get any films, and we were giving out dishes, plus we had comedy gift nights and amateur shows and so on. What were the Allens like? Very good. Very good. The best people in the world to work for. And ’m not kidding you — Barry Allen wasn’t even born when I worked for them. But you see, you’re going back to an era where the industry was a family industry. They weren’t related to each other, but everybody that worked in the industry meant something to somebody else. No matter who, from the janitor right up to the president. There were no big shots. There was nobody that, just because he was president or vice-president, wouldn’t come and say ‘hello’ to you or anything like that. Or ask you questions, or anything. And you feel that the atmosphere has changed. Well, today it’s dog-eat-dog. You know, nobody gives a damn for the next person. It’s not like the old industry, you know. You're here today and they'll say, ‘how are you’, and everything. If you get sick, to hell with him — he’s no good anyway. You see. This is it. It’s dog-eat-dog. It’s not like it used to be. Everybody is outbidding everybody else. It’s got so that one guy who wanted a picture, he even offered to give them a percentage on the candy bar. On the candy bar, the only thing that’s kept the theatres going. It’s a heyday for the film companies, not only American but Canadian, ali of them. It’s a heyday for them. They can get anything they want now for a picture. There’s a shortage of pictures. The hold-overs that you see all these weeks sometimes, they don’t even have pictures to play, so they have to hold them over. In the meantime, they’re holding over and the other guys in the small towns can’t 8/ Cinema Canada get any new films because there are no new films. Haven't the independents always had that problem? I want to tell you something — years ago, a lot of independent theatres made a lot of money, became rich men. I’m going back now to the 30’s during the Depression when Nat Taylor gave up his law practice. I don’t think he was a good lawyer; maybe that’s why he gave it up. He went around to all the little theatres and said, “let’s join in one shot together and we'll do the buying and booking for you and be partners and pay expenses and everything, and you manage your theatre. We'll look after it all’. These people all became millionaires, those little independent corner theatres that you don’t see anymore. Taylor made more than 24 of them who had the guts to go in with him — millionaires. So they did alright. They did very well. Until television. Actually, television didn’t... bingo killed us more. Why don’t you explain that. I thought television was the thing that... Well, the people who went to theatres, most of the time, couldn’t afford television at first. If you recall, they were too expensive. But then, bingo came in. And that’s what killed us because they could afford it and they could make money on bingos — that’s why dishes or anything in a theatre couldn’t go after that because money was what the people were looking for. Take a look at what’s happening at the lottery today. People will spend their last dollar trying to get the million dollars. How did drive-ins change things? Did they change the theatre business at all? They were doing good. You could buy pictures for $25 and take in $2,000, and the concession was big. Concession was big in drive-ins. To me, a drive-in theatre is a television screen with refreshments — a drivein restaurant, actually, and you're letting them watch television on the screen. If you watched at a drive-in, the first feature that goes on, they don’t sit in the cars and watch the feature, they eat, eat and eat. I don’t know what the hell goes on — how much can they eat? What were other things like? When did the Sunday showings start? Exactly, I can’t tell you. I remember I was fighting the Lord’s Day Act. As a matter of fact, in one of my theatres, a drive-in, when we didn’t have Sunday movies, we used to show the film free, but charge for parking and then they grabbed me for that. By the time they brought me up and were going to fine me, we had already fought the fact that we could open up on Sundays. And this is what we were fighting. I’ve always been fighting the film companies and the chains, although I represent the chains too now, you know. I’m from the Association but I still have my fights with them... Mind you, it’s getting better. You'll notice that independent theatres with Odeon are playing day and date in the city now. Some pictures they don’t want us to play — this new picture opening up, Close Encounters that Columbia’s got — it’s supposed to be a big picture. They don’t want nobody else playing it with them. But Odeon broke down and they’re letting you play now. I play with Odeon in Brantford even. Famous will eventually break down. When did you start showing foreign films? When I came back from the States in ’49. I took a look at the halls where they were having ethnic shows and, Christ, the places were jammed with an influx of ethnic groups from Europe coming in after the war. They were sitting in the pit with us and couldn’t even see the shows. So I said, gee, this is crazy, I’m going to open up a theatre. I met Dorothy Burritt and I opened the old King Theatre on College and Manning. It had been closed and I started to show the first, actually the first, foreign films in Toronto because the International was in and they were calling it a foreign film theatre, but they were showing nothing but British films. Well, I started with Jewish films, Italian films and German films — no, no Germans at that time. When we showed the Russian films, the people from Yugoslavia were against the Russians. We used to have fights outside, and then when we showed some other kind of films that some nationality didn’t like, they were picketing outside. We had to have police there.