Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

What Canada Thinks of Our Movies 61 There is always a crowd around them when the huskies lie down in the entrance of the theater. People are not used to them, you see." I later repeated this conversation to a dear old lady down in California. "Not used to them!" she echoed incredulously. "Why, I thought they did all their traveling with dog teams !" It was in Winnipeg that I noticed the extensive advertising of D. W. Griffith's "America." It struck me as being a most peculiar type of picture to exhibit to an admittedly pro-English public. I was curious to know how it had been received and whether or not it had been shown in its entirety. So I called upon the manager of the theater and asked him some questions about it. He was Canadian born, but with the American viewpoint— as I found was the case with most Canadians. "Well, this is the second week it has run, and we are doing a big business on it," he told me. "You see, Winnipeg has about thirty thousand Americans and they will support it for one week because it is so thoroughly an American picture. The Canadian and British portions of the population will support it for another week — for the same reason. Naturally, the English don't like it. I have had a great many letters telling how inaccurate it was. The board of censors cut out three and a half reels — the reels which show the Indians and British massacring the colonists. They particularly resented the idea of the Indians being the allies of the British. And after the opening of the picture there were several sharp letters in the newspapers revising the battle of Lexington and telling what a traitor George Washington was." In Calgary, the Canadian Pacific's next stop, a most charming theater manager gave me an idea as to the favorites of the Canadian motionpicture public. Harold Lloyd is Canada's best and biggest bet. They have a wholesome respect for Tom Mix, whose Mounted Police pictures are accurate as to detail. The gentleman told me with a great deal of pride that Tom Mix had come up to Regina, the headquarters of the Royal A Canadian Mounted Police, and had secured the cooperation of the officials in making his picture. He laughed good-naturedly when I spoke of the errors that had been committed by the Hollywood versions of the great open spaces. "Yes," he said, "most of them are terrible. Fortunately, we Jf have a sense of humor." J My last stop before reentering J the States was at Vancouver. And strangely enough I found the British attitude more prevalent here than in any of the other Canadian cities I have visited. The manager of the Capitol Theater was an American, who has been extremely successful despite the fact Tom Mix is a great favorite in Canada, particularly because his pictures of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are always accurate in detail. that he never quite knows how a picture is going to react on the public. "I used to play up De Mille pictures until I found that the public simply did not take to them. They are crazy about comedies — I am running 'Little Miss Bluebeard' now and am cleaning up on it. Bebe Daniels is a great favorite in Canada." "What about Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks ?" I asked. He shook his head regretfully. "Not so good," he answered. "Mary Pickford has never been the favorite in Canada that she is down in the States, and as for Fairbanks, my patrons don't like him at all. I can't figure out any reason for it unless it is because he is so aggressively and enthusiastically American. 'The Thief of Bagdad' was almost a failure, and it was only because of tremendous exploitation that 'Robin Hood' went over big. Even then it was criticized as not being in accordance with history. 'Robin Hood' means a good deal to English people, you know. They don't like to see such a favorite character made into a musical-comedy figure. On the first night the picture was shown I was very much interested in getting the opinions of the audience. I was circulating around in the foyer while the people were coming out, and I heard a typical English voice drawl out scathingly, 'The pictuah is most inaccurate. Robin Hood was only five feet foah, and not athletic !' " I mentioned "The Alaskan," which I had understood was made in British Columbia, not far from Vancouver. The manager looked disgusted. "If you want to make people mad up here, just say 'The Alaskan' to them. A good many persons claim that the book was inaccurate in the first place, and when Herbert Brenon came up here and said they were going to film the story, we all thought that the atmosphere at least would be correct. Instead of that, what did he turn out ? Plains Indians in fringed buckskin dresses galloping around on horseback ; cloth tepees, which the northwestern Indians never used ; and, although the original story is concerned with a herd of reindeer, there wasn't a reindeer in the picture !" I brought up the mooted question of the great open spaces and the Mounted Police. "Of course, that's a sore point in Canada," he said, smiling. "Now an American audience sees nothing sacred in the person of a policeman. He is just an officer of the law; some one to be tricked as often as possible, and the more he is made ridiculous in the movies, the better the people like it. But in Canada the Mounted Police is a sacred institution. The people resent having libContinued on page 100