Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

59 A dog team is the most effective means of exploiting a picture in Canada. This one, oddly enough, is drawing a billboard advertising a South Sea Island picture. What Canada Thinks of Our Movies Some observations made on a trip across the Dominion that show the attitude of its inhabitants toward American players and toward our so-called Canadian pictures. By Emma-Lindsay Squier I ONCE read a schoolboy's essay on Canada. It was a masterpiece of brevity, and incorporated in it what most grown-ups would say, if they were suddenly asked for their idea of our northern cousin across the border. ''Canada is quite a large country made up of snow and dog teams. It is inhabited by furs and trappers, and by Mounted Police. They always get their man." Such modern inventions as the daily newspapers, railroads, and telegraphs, have not served to dispel the prevalent idea that Canada's population is divided into three parts : Rough French Canadians, who wear checked woolly shirts and say ''By gar!" lithesome French-Canadian girls with red sashes and tiger-cat tempers, who keep amazingly marcelled in an electricity-less wilderness, and stalwart Mounted Police, with small waists and long eyelashes, whose occupation consists in making love to the aforesaid lithesome tiger cat — and in always getting their man. I wonder if the half of the world that knows not how the other half lives has ever stopped to think how our Canadian brothers react to our American celluloid versions of the northern land. I can perhaps give you an adequate comparison by asking you to imagine that motion pictures are made in Calgary instead of Hollywood, and that dozens and dozens of films are sent down across the border and exhibited in American motion-picture theaters, all purporting to be true pictures of American life. And suppose these films, without exception, were of the wild When Mary Pickford visited Toronto not long ago she searched out this house where she had spent part of her childhood. West vintage a cowboy in woolly "chaps" for a hero ; a snarling Mexican in a two-gallon sombrero for a villain; and a remarkably ringleted young woman for a heroine, who in spite of living a life in the great alkali spaces, manages to keep her nails pointed and permanently polished. Would we be insulted, ironically amused, or would we simply pity the ignorance of those distant cousins, who so successfully showed us America — as it is not? Well, that's the way the Canadians feel about most of our movies that deal with Canadian life. They are quite charitable about it on the whole, but they do long for a picture that will really represent Canada as it is. Any one who would write an epic of the romance and glory of Canada would have the whole-souled cooperation of every loyal Canadian. Our insistent, and not always accurate, use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not the only thing our northern cousins dislike about American motion pictures. They have the conservative English attitude concerning publicity for motionpicture stars. You will probably recall that Mary Pickford is a Canadian girl, and that Toronto is her birthplace. Mary went back to visit her home town about a year ago. She found the house where she had lived in her early childhood, and called on some of the neighbors. Figure for yourself what would have happened if "our Mary" had been born in Detroit and had gone back to visit the old homestead. The mayor would have been down to meet the train with the police force, the fire brigade, and the Rotary Club. The schools would have declared a holiday and the newspapers would have devoted special editions to telling how Mary looked and