Belfast on the Don - 50th anniversary of the Toronto Film Society

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Summer, 1998 by Ben Viccari

This year the Toronto Film Society celebrates its 50th anniversary at a time when the existence of such film appreciation groups is threatened by the wide spread availability on video, television and in the commercial theatre itself of so much great cinema, both historic and modern. The anniversary occasions a flashback to the days when Toronto was described by one wag as "Belfast on the Don."

In 1948, Toronto's artistic life was circumscribed by the "comfortable" programming of the Toronto Symphony, touring productions at the Royal Alexandra theatre, the limited collection at the Toronto Art Gallery and semi-professional theatrical groups such as the Dora Mavor Moore Players. The one exception was CBC radio, regarded by the city's strongly conservative element as a highly subversive organization.

As far as cinema was concerned, Vivien Taylor's International Cinema in North Toronto bravely pioneered modern British movies and a few subtitled European productions but there was little room for the bolder efforts of filmmakers abroad.

As a non-commercial venture, the Toronto Film Study Group occasionally rented 16 mm copies of worthwhile films and showed them to a handful of people. In the summer of 1948, I attended one of these showings to see William Wellman's The Oxbow Incident, a rare Hollywood film that dared at that time to confront racial prejudice. Driving forces behind the study group were Dorothy and Oscar Burritt, who had recently come to Toronto from Vancouver due to Oscar's CBC posting. During the discussion following the film, I learned that the Burritts and other aficionados were planning a full-blown film society. Because of my background in the British film industry, I was asked to join the organizing committee of the Toronto Film Society.

Upon applying for a charter, we learned that a pre-war group with the same name still existed, if only on paper. Fortunately, one of our group was Roy Clifton, a school teacher with a law degree, who undertook the onerous task of contacting all surviving members of the society to persuade them to relinquish the charter to us. This eventually happened, but we went boldly forward and booked the Royal Ontario Museum for a series of six showings beginning on October 25, 1948.

With a brochure that proclaimed "Film is an Art", we canvassed friends, known cinema lovers and whenever possible, used the mailing lists of other organizations. I remember personally going to see that beloved theatrical pioneer Dora Mavor Moore and humbly asking for the use of her mailing list. With a sweeping gesture she replied: "Indeed you may. After all, we're all travelling the same road, aren't we?" Dora lived to see a great deal of professional theatre in Canada and her shade must be highly gratified to know that our annual Dora Awards honour her.

We contacted Gerald Pratley to determine whether he'd be interested in joining the organizing committee. Working for a pittance as a continuity writer at the CBC, he'd come to Canada early in 1947 and had persuaded CBC to let him present two weekly programs: The Movie Scene and Music from the Movies. I believe that, in the beginning, Pratley wasn't even paid for the programs. They'd become favourites of the kind of people we wanted to join. Pratley was the only serious English language film critic east of Vancouver, where the late, great Clyde Gilmour held sway at The Sun until joining the Toronto Telegram in the Fifties.

Good films were available on a rental basis from New York's Museum of Modern Art and we booked a double bill of the Dietrichvon Sternberg classic The Blue Angel and the British documentary Cyprus is an Island. We addressed envelopes, licked stamps, pleaded with editors to run notices about the formation of the society and by the time we opened, on October 25, 1948, had a nucleus of paid-up members. Last minute enquirers were told to purchase their subscriptions at the door.

Morning of, we still hadn't received the two films from MOMA-and a frantic search revealed they were being held at customs and nobody had notified us! The films were extricated and rushed by cab to the projection room only minutes before the doors were opened.

The projector rolled and the audience's reception was overwhelming and we signed up enough members that evening to guarantee a season of six showings.

By the end of the year we had a duly elected board of directors with Gerald Pratley as our first president. His air of quiet authority brought balance to a widely diverse group.

One of our directors was Sterling Campbell, a World War I Canadian flyer who, in Hollywood, had achieved fame as a director of second unit flying sequences. His combat scenes in the original Dawn Patrol were so good that they were retained for the second version of the film, starring Errol Flynn. Campbell had returned to Canada and had directed Bush Pilot, starring Austin Willis, Jack LaRue and Rochelle Hudson, arguably the greatest turkey ever produced in Canada.

Campbell was a true product of Hollywood and couldn't seem to get it into his head that there was an audience in North America for the European classics like Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin which we showed in the first season set to a magnificent, taped score of Russian music assembled by Oscar Burritt. At every board meeting Campbell would come up with gems like : "Why do we have to show all those Russians mugging into the camera when I can get you Bush Pilot?"