History of Ontario's film industry, 1896 to 1985

TAKE ONE, Summer, 2000 by Wyndham Wise

N.L. Nathanson left Famous Players Canadian Corp. in 1941 for a second time and joined Odeon Theatres, a rival exhibition chain nominally operated by his son, Paul. After losing an intense bidding war for the Canadian exhibition rights for MGM films, Odeon Theatres remained second to Famous Players in the Canadian theatrical marketplace. N.L. Nathanson died in June 1943 and Paul retired at the age of 31 for health reasons. He sold his interest to the J. Arthur Rank Organisation of Great Britain in 1946. However, despite their size and influence, the two major theatrical chains did not control the entire provincial distribution / exhibition pie. Smaller slices were left for independent companies who were represented by various lobbying groups. First there had been the Toronto Moving Picture Exhibitors Protective Association, followed by the Independent Theatres Association, formed in 1935. Then in 1942, the Independent Motion Picture Exhibitors' Association was formed, soon to become the National Council of Independent Exhibitors of Canada in an effort to lobby the federal government. Also in 1942, a second group of exhibitors revived the Independent Theatres Association. It called itself the Motion Pictures Theatres Association of Ontario, with Nat Taylor as chairman. Taylor, owner of 20th Century Theatres, the third-largest provincial chain of theatres, was also the publisher of the Canadian Film Weekly. Taylor used his trade weekly as a personal forum for his ideas on the Canadian film industry. In May 1956, he proudly announced: "Canada returned more money for film rentals to Hollywood producers in 1955 than any other country in the world and for the first time took sole possession of the top spot."

In the early years, the National Film Board had neither the personnel nor the equipment to meet all of the government's film requirements. Founder John Grierson's solution to the problem was to assign productions to private companies such as Associated Screen News of Montreal and others, including Crawley Films of Ottawa. Frank Radford "Budge" Crawley and his wife Judith had made their first film (Ile d'Orleans) on their honeymoon, which won an award for best amateur film in 1939 at a New York festival. Crawley went to work on the Film Board's Canada Carries On series, as well as army training films. By the end of the war, he had moved into sponsored films for the private sector, opening his own studios in a church hall in Ottawa. He eventually would become Canada's most successful independent film producer. His major breakthrough came in 1948 with The Loon's Necklace, the tale of an Indian legend, which won many awards, including the Film of the Year Award at the first Canadian Film Awards. A few features were also shot in Ontario between the end of the Second World War and 1960. These included: Bush Pilot (1947) directed by Sterling Campbell; Oedipus Rex (1956), directed by Tyrone Guthrie (a film of Guthrie's production at the Stratford Festival); A Dangerous Age (1958) and A Cool Sound From Hell (1958) by Sidney J. Furie; and Now That April's Here (1959) and Ivy League Killers (1959) by William Davidson.