ane

The Film Board, which

pioneered in documentary films, deals with peoplein real life.

What's behind the attack on
the National Film Board?

By MARK FRANK

A SINISTER plot to undermine and destroy the National Film
Board and eliminate some of its leading workers in a mass
witch-hunt conducted by newly appointed film commissioner W. A.
Trwin, has come to light following publication of a sensational series

of articles locally.

Behind the attack on the film board is the shape of powerful

Hollywood movie interests, which
have long feared the growth on
the American continent of a
competitive institution in the
government film producing agen-

cy.

Acting as an agent for the
US. film monopoly in Canada, it
appears, is John J. Fitzgibbons,
an American, who is president
of Famous Players Canadian, big-
gest theater chain in Canada and
the Canadian division of Holly-
wood'’s giant Paramount.

Aided by private commercial
film interests in Canada’ which
prospered on film contracts dur-
ing the war and live parasite-
like on the great film circuits
built up by film board workers
throughout the country, Fitzgib-
bons has reportedly been able to
organize attacks on the board,
His work in Canada, to break
the back of a native film indust-
ry which has pioneered over the
past ten years in documentary
films, has been advanced by the
political maneuvering of the St.
Laurent government.

Indications are that Recon-
struction Minister Robert H.
Winters, a former Northern
Electric engineer, and chairman
of the film board, has been util-
ized by Prime Minister St. Laur-
ent and Trade Minister C. D.
Howe in their tricky Washington
deals bartering away Canadian
sovereignty, to accomplish the
final destruction of , the film
board or its reduction to impot-
ence as a force building a native
Canadian culture of an _  inde-
pendent and democratic kind.

One ‘of the alleged immediate
demands of the Motion Pitcure
Industry Council, headed by Fitz-
gibbons, and including the CPR-
owned Associated Screen News,
Audio-Pictures and Crawley
Films Ltd., was to call for sum-
mary dismissal of ex-film com-
missioner Ross McLean and his
assistant Ralph Foster.

Both of these, but particularly
McLean, had been associated
originally with John Grierson,
expert British documentary film

worker and founder of the board.

McLean had further developed
a wide system of community film
councils, linked by strong ties to
the film board institution and
representing a huge audience,

At present there are some 250
such film councils in the country;
5,000 urban organizations as
members; and 3,300 rural points
acting as outlets for NFB and
other 16-mm. films. Since the
war’s end film libraries have
jumped from 44 to 233.

In all there are more than
13,000 different audiences involv-
ing 1,000,000 people who go to
such screenings each month out-
side of the regular commercial
theaters. In addition NFB news-
reels go to 60,000,000 in Canada;
320,000,000 in the U.S; ,and 50,-
000 over television.

‘All this has taken place in ten
short years of film board exist-
ence, constituting no mean threat
to movie moguls. Hence the im-
mediate material desire to break
the board.

Help from Winters was not
long in forthcoming, In a secret
meeting with members of the
Association of Motion Picture
Producers and Laboratories in
Canada, headed by Jack Chis-
holm of Associated Screen News,
Winters apparently promised
that McLean and Foster “would
be taken care of.” As one cor-
respondent put it in the Finan-

cial Times of February 3, Win-
ters as “in the absurd position
of playing the role of an amiable
pawn for Hollywood interests.”

Certain it is that Winters gets
his cue from cabinet members
like Howe and St. Laurent. Re-
ports have it that Winters was
promised his high cabinet. post
only on condition that he assume
the NEB chairmanship and un-
dertake to shape the board’s fu-
ture policy along lines agreed
upon by Ottawa and Washington.

Some indication of this is seen
in conférences which Howe held
in Washington during 1947 with
the American film industry. It is
believed here that he prepared

the ground for smashing the

board, by giving carte blanche
to American film producers to
make pictures on location in
Canada,

Hence the sickening products
about the Mounties, the glory of
the CPR, which have been fed
the public and other peoples as
Canadiana. The film board, on
the other hand, in its use of.
documentary has projected Can-
adians as they really live and
work, threatening the extension
of this technique. into real live
story material, could eventually
displace Hollywood’s' sterile pro-

ductions from the Canadian mar-
ket.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FE

More recently the attack on the
board has taken the form of
statements in the press by the
Chamber of Commerce and the
Progressive ~ Conservatives and
through Submissions to the Mas-
Sey Commission,

It is interesting to note that a
resolution passed by the Chamber
of Commerce at its Montreal
convention last October had as
its prime movers General Films
Ltd. of Regina and Arthur A.
Crawley and Company, an Ottawa
firm of chartered accountants.
Arthur Crawley is the father of
“Budge” Crawley, head of Craw-
ley Films Ltd., the company
which Teportedly supplied Ross
McLean with an RCMP list of
50 film board workers who
Should be fired as “reds”.

McLean is known to have been
dismissed because of his refusal
to. Weaken the board’s technical
Standards by indiscriminate fir-
ing,

A blueprint of the final cam-
paign against the film board is
contained in an original submis-
sion to the Massey Commission
drawn up at the October 1949
founding meeting of the Motion
Picture Industry Council,

Held to be

“too dangerous” for
release

in view of widespread
Public sympathy for the board

throughout the country, the draft

(Concluded on Next Page)
BRUARY 24, 1950—PAGE 4

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