Canadian Bacon - History of Canadian Filmmaking (Part Five)

“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

Associated Screen News

Prime Minister John A MacDonald founded the Canadian Pafic Railway to embody the national dream of Canada, and unite the country. From its founding in 1881 through every scandal in between, and the many lives lost in its construction, it was, for a long time, the only common element that every resident of Canada could agree on. The Railway company held the country together, both in communication, transportation, and growth. It was only right that this company held the torch in participating in the national voice, i.e., cinema.

For several years, the CPR would hire an independent contractor to experiment with the medium and create promotional materials. However, they wouldn’t consider expanding their efforts until an American entrepreneur tried to enter their realm of untapped potential.

Enter Charles Urban, a German-American producer and distributor who was one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War. Urban, a bulldog of a man, can best be described as a robust man with a shifty grin, resembling what you would naturally picture a non-nonsense, cigar-smoking 1920s producer to look like. Urban was a pioneer of documentary, educational, propaganda, and scientific film, and the producer of the world's first successful motion picture colour system.

Urban first entered the film industry in 1895, when he exhibited the Kinetoscope in Detroit, Michigan, early in the year. Urban produced a range of nonfiction films at his company, the Warwick Trading Company, including travel films, war reportage, exploration films, sports films, advertising films, and natural history films. It was through this company that he produced the first-ever sponsored film, the precursor to both the documentary and the television commercial, in 1898 for the Canadian farm equipment manufacturer Massey Harris, which sought to show its reaper-binder at work on Ontario farms.

The Warwick Trading Company produced and distributed three-quarters of the films exhibited in Britain at that time. In 1900, to encourage tourism and immigration, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) hired Urban to shoot films in Canada and distribute the films in Britain. However, in 1903, Urban would have a falling-out with the owners of the Warwick Trading Company, Frank Maguire and Joseph Baucus, which led him to found the Charles Urban Trading Company.

The Charles Urban Trading Company, beginning in 1903, was a major distributor of Canadian films in Britain, including those made by the CPR. As early as 1891, the CPR produced films to encourage rail travel in western Canada. These films were so successful that, to this day, when many non-Canadians think of Canada, they think of the Rocky Mountains and Banff National Park.

In 1903, Urban also began making his own propaganda films in Canada. He sent three British cinematographers to Canada and formed the Bioscope Company of Canada specifically to produce films for the CPR. In 1903 and 1904, Bioscope produced the 35-film series Living Canada, which was re-released in 1906 as Wonders of Canada. This film series was so successful that he made a spin-off, Living London, in 1904. Urban continued to produce CPR films until 1917, while remaining based in London.

In June 1920, Charles Urban announced the formation of Associated Screen News (ASN) New York Ltd. and its wholly owned subsidiary, Associated Screen News of Canada, which would be incorporated in July by the Canadian Pacific Railways, which invested $250,000.00 in the company. A private share offering in both the United States and Canada financed the formation of the new company.

At the beginning of the venture, the CPR held only a 50% interest in ASN, but it was the majority shareholder of Associated Screen News Canada. Its president was the CPR's chief engineer, Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, and its General Manager was Bernard Norrish, whose personal friend, the cinematographer John M. Alexander, who was usually uncredited, handled production and directed most of ASN's early films.

By 1924, Charles Urban had expanded his business ventures. Associated Screen News, New York Ltd. failed; expansions of his Kinetoscope color systems generated no traction; and Urban’s legacy and name would disappear from the headlines of the motion picture industry. It was due to this collapse and sheer luck that the CPR’s good investment enabled it to own all the shares of Associated Screen News of Canada. This company would become one of the most innovative and groundbreaking studios of its time.

After the collapse of its New York Studio, Canadian Pacific’s financial backing enabled Associated Screen News Canada to acquire critical resources, assemble a large team, and relocate all business operations to Montreal. The CPR viewed this company as a significant investment, a means of shipping Canadian stories to American screens. More screens meant more money. More money meant more clout. It was from there that ASN’s first headquarters sat in the Albee Building behind the Imperial Cinema of Montreal, erected in 1913. The company eventually moved out and constructed its own building in the mid-1920s, which still stands at the corner of Décarie and de Maisonneuve West boulevards. It contained the company’s studio, workshops, laboratory, and offices. As well as lighting/grip equipment rentals, and a sound stage. Later, following the collapse of ASN, the building served as the headquarters of Panavision and Pathe. The 1999 TV series Peter Benchley's Amazon was also filmed in the former studio, now featuring fully renovated apartments within the gym.

ASN quickly became the voice of Canada. Motion pictures were the pre-eminent form of mass communication in the late twenties and early thirties. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (radio) was not formed until 1936; the National Film Board was not founded until 1938; and television was still limited to laboratory use as an experimental device. The few Canadians who owned wireless receivers often received signals south of the border. Not to mention the programming of the first Canadian stations, such as CFCF Montreal 160, which were merely retransmissions of American programming. Everybody was going to the movies, but Canadians weren't seeing much of Canada in their movie houses. The only other Canadian content in theaters was short clips inserted into American or British newsreels.

Finally Some Stablity

During the 1910s and 1920s, newsreels contained a disproportionate amount of American content, shaping Canadians' perceptions and focus on Canadian politics. This was a concern for the nation and its government, and it wasn’t until the 1930s that Nova Scotia and Ontario became the first provinces in Canada to establish a minimum Canadian content requirement for newsreels screened in local theatres. This legislation would be responsible for the financial growth and expansion, and the continued success, of Associated Screen News (ASN) of Canada.

In Canada, theaters were a provincial responsibility; therefore, quotas were set by the provinces. One quota that was imposed in Canada was the Ontario newsreel quota. The Provincial Treasurer, J.D. Monteith, informed the American companies that 40% of each newsreel had to be devoted to the British Empire, with at least 25% devoted to Canada. With British Columbia being the only exception, as it sought a British quota for feature films, not for newsreels.

ASN initially produced travelogues and industrial shorts, but its profits came mainly from its laboratories, which numerous out-of-country companies used. This was the first time Canada became a post-production powerhouse by serving as an outsourcing location for laboratory services and labor. Almost all major Hollywood studios had their release prints made at ASN from 1921 until the “talkies” (sound movie era).

American-produced newsreels distributed by ASN were always popular, but occasional theatre owners requested more Canadian newsreels. From there, ASN created an extremely profitable annual compilation that they sent to Canadian theatres to recap the nation's events. Throughout the year, ASN cameramen were encouraged to save certain news stories for possible inclusion in the final production.

In 1923, the ASN launched a bilingual intertitles Department. These were short, printed texts or dialogue cards inserted into the film to convey character dialogue, narrative information, or context. This department would acquire American silent films and re-edit them for French-Canadian audiences. Associated Screen News became the first film company in North America to provide this service, and in the process, it found it highly profitable.

ASN initially employed eight camera operators using Bell & Howell 2709s—the same models used by Hollywood studios. When the film industry switched to sound at the turn of the 1930s, more than a hundred people worked in Associated Screen News’ Montreal offices.

Sponsored films were the mainstay of production throughout ASN's existence. ASN produced films for nearly every major Canadian corporation and many U.S. companies, including Eaton’s, SunLife, Shell Oil, Ford, General Motors, Bell Canada, International Harvester, and General Electric. ASN also produced films for several provinces, including British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The films were produced for various provincial agencies, such as tourism, provincial crown corporations, and hydroelectric power utilities.

The team led by General Manager Bernard Norrish would go on to produce numerous films for the Canadian Pacific over the decades and to sponsor films for various Canadian businesses, newsreel segments, and short theatrical film series. In 1931, Associated Screen News successfully entered the sound era, expanded its facilities, and built the most advanced film studio in the country. British director Michael Powell shot scenes for 49th Parallel in their De Maisonneuve West Boulevard building in 1941, a fiction flick co-written with Emeric Pressburger.

One of the most critical players in ASN would be John Murray Gibbon, a Scottish-Canadian writer, cultural promoter, and Advertising Agent for the CPR. Gibbon worked closely with ASN’s Montreal team, bringing in the foreign press and organizing oddly charming Canadian Pacific Railway Festivals, a series of folk and crafts festivals sponsored by the CPR, with Sir Ernest MacMillan, a Canadian orchestral conductor, composer, organist, and Canada's only "Musical Knight."

Gibbon also handled French-language relations, helping the CPR and ASN bridge the linguistic divide. These achievements led to his overseeing the entire Associated Screen News Canada company. ASN achieved what other film companies could not at the time: consistent investments, distribution, and funding—all thanks to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The quality and talent of its personnel contributed to ASN's success. Bernard Norrish had an eye for talent as he was one of the few Canadians with a deep knowledge of world cinema, stemming from his previous role at the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau.

Norrish built a team of talented technicians. The most prominent member of the team was Terry Ramsaye, who worked with Charlie Chaplin at the Mutual Film Corporation in the 1910s and published one of the first histories of cinema in the early 1920s. Ramsaye is credited with editing the intertitles for several Associated Screen News productions.

Ramsaye would depart ASN in the late 1920s. Norrish then turned to Gordon Sparling in 1931. Sparling was 30 at the time and had nearly a decade of experience in cinema, having previously made films for the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau, the Canadian Forestry Association, and Paramount’s New York studios at the turn of the 1930s.

Sparling

Sparling brought a new quality standard to the mundane subjects he was assigned. Travelogues turned poetic under his lens. One of his films, Rhapsody in Two Languages(1934), was a travelogue meant to entice American viewers to come and sample Montreal’s nightlife. It became an extraordinary film with unexpectedly elevated cinematography, editing, and soundtrack. It featured Canada's first original music score, written by Howard Fogg, and was priced twice as high as comparable releases at the time. It is now the best-known of the Canadian Cameo series. ASN employees were used as unpaid actors and were filmed during their lunch hour.

Sparling was initially hired to create the Canadian Cameo series. The series' original intention was to produce several purely dramatic travel Videos. Before the advent of television, Sparling's dramatic Videos were among the few opportunities for Canadian artists to express themselves to a national audience. The cameos began in 1932 and were never intended to generate significant profits; however, the series was expected to break even at the very least. They became the longest-running series of privately produced Canadian short films. Shadow River (1933) was the first of these solely dramatic cameos to be released. This series aimed to depict Canada for Canadians and for audiences worldwide.

Sparling would go on to produce three water fantasy cameos: Ornamental Swimming (1937), Ballet of the Mermaids (1938), and Design for Swimming (1948). Ballet of the Mermaids was distributed internationally and nominated for an Academy Award. Part of the film's widespread popularity was likely due to its luminous quality, achieved by printing on yellow-toned stock and then tinting it blue. The practice of tinting and toning had virtually disappeared after the advent of the optical soundtrack.

Sparling also produced several Canadian Cameos featuring choreographed skating and swimming. These Cameos provided a rare opportunity for Canadians outside of Toronto and Montreal to witness other Canadian performers. The Toronto Skating Club was featured in five Cameos: Carnival on Skates (1933), Crystal Ballet (1937), Flashing Blades (1940), Beauty and the Blade (1948), and Circus on Ice (1953).

Sparling’s work significantly improved the company’s image, as Associated Screen News’s productions entered theatres in the USA and Canada. Sparling’s films were among the few in which Canadians could see accurate images of themselves on movie screens.

While Sparling was hard at work, Bernard Norrish sought to expand ASN wherever American influence was weakest. In 1935, Norrish was approached by C.F. Notman, whose father had established one of the first photographic studios in Montreal, Canada. In acquiring the Notman company, ASN obtained a valuable library of photographic negatives dating back to Notman’s establishment in 1856, which were then used in the company’s newsreels.

A few other key players in ASN were Maurice Metzger, who played a central role in the lab and sound department’s activities for many decades. Associated Screen News’ films from the early 1930s onward were regularly recorded by some of the country’s most prominent composers and performers, such as Howard Fogg and Lucio Agostini (also known as Alys Robi’s conductor). A forgotten pioneer of Canadian cinema, Margot Blaisdell, was also responsible for many of the company’s screenplays. For the task of cinematography, it was generally entrusted to John M. Alexander, Alfred Jacquemin, Lucien Roy, and Frank O’Byrne, as well as Roy Tash, who is heralded as the "Dean of Canadian Cameramen", a title affectionately bestowed on him by the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. Beginning in the early 1930s, these operators, scattered across Canada, made full use of Associated Screen News’ fleet of trucks equipped for location sound recording.

Gordon Sparling pushed ASN into sound and helped steer it through its golden years. He directed early Canadian works like The Tidy House (La Maison en ordre) in 1936 and The Kinsmen in 1938. In 1936, Sparling directed another longer film for Shell Oil of Canada, House in Order. This film ran five reels (55 minutes) and was the longest commercial dramatization Sparling produced. Much like the previous That’s Shell Service, this film extolled the virtues of being a Shell dealer. During the production of this film, Sparling convinced Norrish to build an extensive sound studio at ASN, which, upon completion, rivalled any in North America.

Sparling also experimented with producing comedy. This was risky as Canada was not generally known for producing comedians in their thirties and forties. Sparling produced two comedy Cameos, Sitzmarks the Spot (1948) and All Joking Astride (1950). These two Cameos were well received: Sitzmarks the Spot was distributed internationally by Warner Brothers, and All Joking Astride won an award at the 1951 Canadian Film Awards.

The Did You Know That? The Canadian Cameos sub-series was started by Roy Tash, who travelled throughout Canada for ASN’s newsreel department. Tash saw the need for a Cameo composed of several small, human-interest or trivia stories. Magnetic Hill and the Reversing Falls in New Brunswick were featured. Did You Know That? It was the longest-running cameo sub-series, running from 1934 to 1943. The format allowed Sparling to use material which, while interesting, could not be stretched into a full-length Cameo. This sub-series was inexpensive to produce because the various segments could be filmed when an ASN crew was in the area for a CPR or other sponsored project. Segments would then sit on a shelf until there were enough to fill the ten-minute running time.

The Battle - WW2

In 1941, Bernard Norrish expanded ASN by forming the Benograph Company. This division of ASN distributed motion picture equipment and motion pictures. Benograph distributed various educational films to public and trade schools nationwide and sold film projectors and non-theatrical film rentals. Most ASN equipment and films used the 16mm format, but several Associated Screen News productions were also printed on 35mm safety stock for non-theatrical screenings.

1943 would cause a powerful shake-up at ASN. Edward Beatty, Chairman and President of the CPR, died. Without him, the CPR was left without a strong vision. Beatty was the last in a line of railroad tycoons who single-handedly controlled the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, following his death in 1943, specific aspects of the CPR’s holdings, such as ASN, were scrutinized. Succeeding him as Chairman was D.C. Coleman. Coleman, who was retiring, deferred his retirement to lead the CPR until a suitable successor could be groomed.

However, the chairman's death won’t slow ASN's growth or further expand its activities in still photography through the purchase of Dunne & Rundle Ltd. of Vancouver. Norrish described the purchase of this company as “a Pacific Coast outlet for Associated’s broadening activities”. In addition, ASN opened a sales office in Toronto, led by Bill Singleton. One of the most significant projects was a contract to document the construction of Toronto’s new subway system.

When 1944 opened with a sequel to the Great War that no one asked for, like many other camera operators on the ASN payroll, Gordon Sparling was drafted when World War 2 started. Regular productions were stalled, replaced by propaganda and puff pieces for the war effort.

During the war, Canada sought to stem the outflow of currency to the United States. The tremendous outflow of theatre revenues was $20 million in 1947, and this was an issue of financial concern as canada needed resources for the war. With a dollar shortage choking the economy, the government blocked Famous Players' earnings from Canadian theatres in a last-ditch effort to fund the war effort and assist the Allies.

For the first time, legislation was seriously being considered to rectify this situation. It had the potential to finally give Canadian producers a shot at distribution. The net effect was to create a market for independent Canadian film producers. In addition, strict currency restrictions would force Americans to reinvest a significant portion of the exhibition's profits in Canada. Many Canadians were hopeful this would mean a boom in Canadian production.

When word got out about the legislative rumblings, Americans moved quickly. John J. Fitzgibbons, the head of Famous Players Canada, felt betrayed, as his pockets weren’t as full as they once were. Wooying like a broken-hearted lover, he met with Clarence Decatur Howe, a liberal cabinet minister nicknamed “Canada's Minister of Everything” during World War II, to try to “fix things”.

Howe, at first not budging, suggested that if Fitzgibbons wanted the money to continue to flow, America should do something for Canada and consider allowing a screen quota for the display of Canadian films in Canadian theatres. So, the two of them developed the Canadian Cooperation Project in 1948. On the surface, it was a tourism PR campaign: shorts about Canada, produced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), distributed across the U.S., name-dropping Canadian cities and landscapes to promote tourism to Canada, and to encourage more interest in National Film Board shorts and Canadian films to be distributed state-side. The MPAA would be required to hire someone in Hollywood to visit the script departments of all the major studios and recommend using the names of Canadian cities and provinces as often as possible.

This was quite possibly the worst policy ever made in the history of the Canadian film and television industry.

This Canadian Cooperation Project would lead to a death rattle on a unified front of Canadian Film exhibition and distribution across the country. The idea of a screen quota for domestic features was abandoned, and American companies had untaxed, unrestricted access to Canadian theaters. Famous Players Canada Corporation was still free to do what it wanted, without any challenges to its hold over Canadian theatres.

In its 10 years of existence, the Canadian Cooperation Project produced only a few Hollywood shorts that portrayed Canada as a viable tourism destination, with the bare minimum of throwaway mentions of Canada in Hollywood films. Since the creation of the Canadian Cooperation Project in 1948, there has been no evidence whatsoever that mentioning Canada and its landmarks has improved the appeal of, or encouraged the growth of, Canadian films and TV shows.

Under the Canadian Cooperation Project, the threat of further barriers to American film producers in the Canadian film market was eliminated. This relaxation allowed American newsreel cameramen to enter and exit Canada at will. It eliminated the need for theatres and other external distributors to purchase Canadian footage from production houses such as Associated Screen News.

Once a bright jewel in its crown, ASN was becoming a liability to the Canadian Pacific Railway. The relaxation of the previous Canadian film tariffs under the Canadian Cooperation Project quickly destroyed the financial base of Associated Screen News, and the Canadian Pacific Railway’s commitment to ASN quickly faded.

It didn’t help that the Canadian Pacific Railway faced its highest debt since 1941, its highest fixed charges since 1948, and the lowest return on investment since 1922. The CPR felt it could no longer afford its own production company, and Buck Crump, the new Chairman and President of the CPR, was determined to return the CPR to the head of the transportation business.

Even so, ASN wasn’t dead yet. Despite its parent company's cash-flow issues, ASN was relatively well-positioned financially. The lab division was still generating revenue, processing American features by the hundreds of thousands. In 1945, ASN processed over 50,000 features for the British Rank Organization and performed almost $300,000 worth of work for American studios. In 1946, Norrish predicted that ASN would process more than $500,000 in materials for American studios.

Hundreds of young filmmakers received their first starts at Associated Screen News, and the post facilities expanded to include processing for both 35mm and 16mm film. Working in the post facility was sometimes a long and tedious task, requiring some to work 1-hour-plus shifts and exposing them to hazardous chemicals used to process negatives.

But this did not stop Associated Screen News from exploring new avenues in filmmaking. After World War 2, ASN invested in “new” sixteen-millimetre motion pictures. Although some filmmakers considered the medium an “amateur” medium, the smaller, lightweight cameras were first used at ASN to produce films for the CPR. With the lifting of wartime restrictions, sixteen millimetre projectors became commonplace in every school and library across Canada. ASN quickly seized this opportunity by producing training films and becoming Canada's largest distributor of technical training and education films.

After World War II, there was also a period of active feature film production in Quebec, and feature filmmaking blossomed in 1944, starting with the release of Le Père Chopin. This film helped create a new, vertically integrated industry with international contacts and support from local religious leaders.

ASN produced thirty-five-millimetre filmstrips on almost every conceivable subject. Chances are that the filmstrips that ASN produced for every Canadian schoolchild of the fifties and sixties endured on rainy days, when there was no escape beyond the classroom projector.

Associated Screen News’s reputation would grow so well that the organization would be entrusted with filming many governmental productions throughout the 1940s and 50s through the National Film Board of Canada and the Service de ciné-photographie de la province de Québec.

With the return of Associated Screen News post-World War 2, Gordon Sparling returned in '47 after his war service, with plans for the heightened importance of the Canadian Cameo series. Production of the Canadian Cameo series had stopped during Sparling’s absence. Regular production resumed in 1948, and a new episode was released every six weeks, even getting picked up across the border.

The Cameo featured a “behind-the-scenes” look at movie production utilizing Sparling’s “rhapsodic technique.” This technique employed clever editing, juxtaposed images, and sounds to evoke activity and the passage of time. The best episode of this sub-series was Canadian Headlines of 1950, which featured a small boy and his father experimenting with the new invention, television.

Sparling figured it was time to go bigger. After the continued success of The Canadian Cameo Series, Sparling decided this was the opportune time to further develop film production in Canada. Sparling, through the production of the Canadian Cameo series, attempted to assemble a body of technical knowledge, craftspeople, and facilities that he hoped would become the nucleus of the studio, capable of competing with the American studios for Canadian screens. With CPR money and ASN’s talent pool, maybe—just maybe—Canada could provide the basis for a Canadian venture into feature production. If ASN provided the talent and CPR provided the financial stability, this venture would have a better chance of enhancing the credibility of the Canadian film industry. The Canadian Pacific Railway was cautious, but supported Sparling. But still, the effort moved at a crawl.

Sparling was optimistic about the future of the Canadian film industry, "Success in Canadian movie making will depend on sound business principles, as in any other industry. When a producing group comes into being which will place experienced people in jobs that demand experience; which is willing and able to pay for 'production values'; which will study its market before its production; and above all, which will remember that while it is nice to speak of the "Movie game", it is the movie business: we will surely find that motion pictures can be made here just as successfully as anywhere else in the world.”