The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

Some might think it a bit of a stretch to claim the renowned Hollywood film company and its famous movie mogul Jack Warner as Canadian. The famous producer of Warner Brothers fame was born in London, Ontario in 1892, but only lived here for the first two years of his life before his family moved to Youngstown, Ohio.

Still, in 1960, Warner received the Order of the British Empire and in a 1973 interview talked about being from Canada along with so many others from Hollywood’s earliest days.

They Said it!

“You in Canada should not be dependent either on the United States or on Great Britain. You should have your own films and exchange them with those of other countries. You can make them just as well in Toronto as in New York City.”

— pioneering silent film director D.W. Griffiths in a 1925 speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto.

Jack Warner was the only one of the famous brothers born in Canada. His father Ben had emigrated from Poland in 1890 and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. He got a job as a cobbler and sent for the rest of his family. Eventually Ben changed trades and became a peddler, a job that brought him eventually to London. Jack apparently had no birth certificate, but later chose August 4 as his birth date. Ben’s business didn’t thrive in the southwestern Ontario community, so the family pulled up stakes and moved.

Warner and his brothers got their start when they opened a theatre in Pennsylvania to show films. One account says they had to borrow chairs for the theatre from an undertaker, which meant patrons had to stand if a funeral was taking place while a film was showing. The Warners’s first Hollywood effort was in 1917–18, but they would produce thousands of films over the next five decades, including the popular Bugs Bunny cartoons and several award-winning movies.

Known as a gambler and a “no-good sonofabitch” who often clashed with famous stars, Warner nevertheless won Oscars for such films as Casablanca, The Life of Emile Zola, and My Fair Lady. He was apparently proudest of The Jazz Singer, the 1927 film that helped usher in the sound era, and for which he later received a special Academy Award. In his retirement years before he died of inflammation of the heart in 1978, Warner said “you’re nothing if you don’t have a studio. Now I’m just another millionaire, and there are a lot of ‘em around.”

Warner Brothers is still one of the best-known studios in the business, having merged with the Time Inc. in 1990 and then becoming AOL Time Warner in 2001. It is one of the biggest media/entertainment conglomerates in the world, producing such films as The Matrix and Harry Potter and TV shows such as ER, Friends, and The West Wing.

Many Canadians besides Jack Warner have been involved in Hollywood’s movie industry from its early days. Another one in the spotlight was Louis B. Mayer, one of the M’s in MGM studios.

Film BITE!

British Columbia is the third-largest film and television production centre in North America, after New York and Los Angeles. Early in this century, an average of more than 200 movies and TV shows were shot in the province annually, injecting about one billion dollars into the provincial economy.

Mayer was born in Minsk, Russia in 1885, but came to Canada with his family when he was three, settling in Saint John, New Brunswick. Mayer’s father was involved in the scrap metal industry, a business young Louis entered when he quit school. At 19, he moved to Boston, eventually bought into some nickelodeons (early movie theatres), and began producing films. He moved to California in 1918, co-founding Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1924.

In addition to producing a wealth of movies during his long career and overseeing the careers of hundreds of Hollywood stars, Mayer was also a key figure in creating the Academy Awards. He devised the scheme partly as a way to keep labour unrest in the movie business from getting out of hand.

Mayer was a major force in motion pictures until the 1950s and died in 1957. Though Canadian-raised, Mayer not only became an American citizen but falsely claimed he was born on the Fourth of July, American Independence Day. Mayer received a special Academy Award in 1950.

1. Mary Pickford: Winner in 1929 for Best Actress in Coquette. The Toronto-born actress also received an honorary award in 1975.

2. Norma Shearer: Won in 1930 for Best Actress in The Divorcée. The Montreal native was also nominated in the same category that same year for Their Own Desire, in 1931 for A Free Soul, in 1934 for The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in 1936 for Romeo and Juliet, and in 1938 for Marie Antoinette.

3. Marie Dressler: The Cobourg, Ontario, star won in 1931 for Best Actress in Min and Bill. She was nominated in the same category the following year for her role in Emma.

4. Deanna Durbin: The Winnipeg-born actress was one of the best-known young stars in the 30s and 40s, and was awarded a miniature Oscar in 1938 for “bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth.” Her films included Three Smart Girls and One Hundred Men and a Girl.

5. Genevieve Bujold: The Montreal performer was nominated in 1969 for Best Actress in Anne of a Thousand Days.

6. Meg Tilly: Raised in Victoria, British Columbia, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1985 for Agnes of God.

7. Kate Nelligan: The London, Ontario, native was nominated in 1991 for Best Supporting Actress in The Prince of Tides.

8. Anna Paquin: Born July 24, 1982, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she won the Best Supporting Actress award for The Piano.

9. Jennifer Tilly: The Vancouver actress matched her sister Meg with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Bullets over Broadway in 1995.

10. Ellen Page: At just 20 years of age, this talented young actress who hails from Halifax, Nova Scotia, was nominated in 2008 in the Best Actress category for her starring role in Juno, a small-budget Canadian film that also garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Canadian Jason Reitman), and Best Original Screenplay (by first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody, who was the only one to pick up an Oscar that night).

1. Walter Houston: The Toronto-born actor was first nominated in 1936 for Best Actor in Dodsworth. He was nominated in the same category in 1941 for All That Money Can Buy. He got the nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1942 in Yankee Doodle Dandy, and won in that category in 1948 for Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

2. Gene Lockhart: The London, Ontario, native was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1938 for Algiers.

3. Raymond Massey: The Toronto actor received a Best Actor nomination in 1940 for Abe Lincoln in Illinois.

4. Walter Pidgeon: From Saint John, New Brunswick, Pidgeon was nominated for Best Actor in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver and in the same category the following year for Madame Curie.

5. Alexander Knox: The Strathroy, Ontario, native was nominated in 1944 as Best Actor in Wilson.

6. Hume Cronyn: From London, Ontario, Cronyn was nominated in 1944 for Best Supporting Actor in The Seventh Cross.

7. Harold Russell: The Sydney, Nova Scotia, native was nominated and won in 1946 for Best Supporting Actor in The Best Years of Our Lives. A war amputee (Russell was missing both arms), he also received a special Oscar that year for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans” with his appearance in the film.

8. John Ireland: The actor from Vernon, British Columbia, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1949 for All the King’s Men.

9. Chief Dan George: Hailing from the Burrard Indian Reserve in North Vancouver, George was nominated in 1970 for Best Supporting Actor in Little Big Man.

10. Dan Aykroyd: The Ottawa-born comedian was nominated in 1989 for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the Best Picture winner Driving Miss Daisy.

11. Graham Greene: Born at the Six Nations Reserve near Brampton, Ontario, Greene received a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 1990 for Dances with Wolves.

They Said it!

“The heart never knows the colour of the skin”

— Chief Dan George (1899-1981)

Test your movie awards knowledge in this Oscar quiz, and you just may be worthy of giving your own acceptance speech.

2. Toronto-born actor Walter Huston won a Best Supporting Actor award in 1948 for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Name his famous actress granddaughter.

4. True or false. Canada has never won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars?

5. What Ontario-born director was behind the camera for the multi-Oscar-winning film Titanic?

7. Which of the following Canadian films was not nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film?

8. Canadian writer and director Paul Haggis is the only screenwriter to have two of his films win back-to-back Oscars for Best Picture, in 2004 and 2005. Name the two films.

• Canada’s first colour television set was set up in an operating theatre at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal on June 21, 1951. It allowed Dr. Gavin Miller to give a running commentary of an abdominal operation.

• The Viewer Chip, or V-Chip, used by parents to block violent or offensive television shows from coming into their homes, was invented by Tim Collins, a professor at the Technical University of British Columbia in Surrey, British Columbia.

• The comedy team Wayne and Shuster, who were legends in the history of Canadian entertainment, appeared a record 67 times on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was broadcast on Sunday nights on CBS television from 1948 to 1971.

• Game show host Alex Trebek may be Canada’s most famous quizmaster today, but another Canadian, Roy Ward Dick-son, gets credit for inventing the genre. His radio program Professor Dick and his Question Box debuted in Toronto on May 15, 1935.

• The Canadian TV show Hammy Hamster, which debuted in 1959, is still seen in more than 20 countries around the world.

• Long before he gained renown as Pa Cartwright on the TV series Bonanza, Canadian-born actor Lorne Greene made a name for himself as a radio broadcaster. During the Second World War he was known to CBC listeners as the “Voice of Doom.”

• Actor Matthew Perry, one of the stars of the Friends TV sitcom, first performed before an audience while studying at Ashbury College in Ottawa, where he played the fastest gun in the West in a play called The Life and Death of Sneaky Fitch. He lived in Ottawa until he was 15; his mother, Suzanne Perry, was former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s press secretary.

• In the 1950s, CBC ran a Canadian version of the popular American show Howdy Doody. Instead of using American host Buffalo Bob, the CBC came up with Timber Tom, a forest ranger, who was played in a few episodes by future Star Trek star William Shatner. Interestingly, the role of Timber Tom had been first offered to James Doohan, who would later play Scotty on Star Trek.

“Wherever you go in the world, you just have to say you’re a Canadian and people laugh.”
— the late John Candy,Canadian comedian and actor

“In my proudest moments, I think I had a real hand in the creative force of making Star Trek. But most of the time, I don’t think about it.”
— Canadian-born actor William Shatner, on the famous 1960s TV series

“We’ve got a stuttering newscaster. We’ve got the black, we’ve got the Asian, we’ve got the woman. I could be a lesbian, folk-dancing, black woman stutterer.”
— Avery Haines, Canadian TV announcer, in an inadvertent on-air comment that led to her being fired

“When I’m in Canada, I feel like this is what the world should be like.”
— Actress Jane Fonda, quoted from a 1987 interview

“Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour — we’re more like celery as a flavour.”
— Canadian comedian Mike Myers

“The U.S. is our trading partner, our neighbour, our ally and our friend … and sometimes we’d like to give them such a smack!”
— Canadian comedian Rick Mercer

Steve Smith has left his mark in several corners of Canada’s entertainment industry but he’s probably best known for the Red Green character he portrayed for 15 seasons on the television show of the same name.

Smith grew up in Toronto and after working at several jobs, including as a teacher and musician, he launched his television career with Smith & Smith, a sketch comedy series starring Steve and his partner and wife, Morag. During this period he created his most popular alter ego, gravel-voiced homespun TV handyman Red Green, the president of the Possum Lodge, a fictional men’s club in the small northwestern Ontario town of Possum Lake, near the also-fictional town of Port Asbestos.

He and his fellow lodge members had their own TV show in which they give humorous lessons and demonstrations in repair work and outdoor activities and advice for men on relating to women, among other things.

Smith starred in the show and also produced and co-wrote it. It eventually evolved into Christmas specials and a movie. The series finale aired in April 2006.

Smith also wrote and produced 26 episodes of Me & Max and 60 episodes of Comedy Mill, which won a Canadian Gemini Award. In his spare time he was head writer of a 13-episode series called Laughing Matters for the Global network and wrote a pilot called “Out Of Our Minds,” starring David Steinberg for Tribune Entertainment.

Smith and fellow Red Green Show actor Pat McKenna won the 1998 Gemini Award (Canada’s equivalent of the Emmy Awards) for Best Performance in a Comedy Program or Series. In 2005, he was a recipient of the Order of Canada.

The father of two boys’ most recent project is the biographical book We’re All in This Together, co-written with Mag Ruff man, a television producer and writer, actress, and building contractor.

Steve is the author or co-author of three other books: Red Green Talks Cars: A Love Story; The Red Green Book: Wit and Wisdom of Possum Lodge; and Red Green’s Duct Tape is Not Enough.

Smith and his wife live in Hamilton and spend winters near Fort Myers, Florida. He plays golf three times a week, spends plenty of time on his houseboat and he and his wife are members of The Fabulous Miromars, a musical trio that performs 1960s tunes mixed with comedy, mostly in Florida. Smith turned 63 on December 24, 2008.