One of the great stories of Toronto’s Jewish community involves the large number of Jews who were pioneers in the Canadian film industry. That story is still largely untold, awaiting the right historian to fit all the pieces together. In the meantime, some key items that help to illuminate the tale are available at the Ontario Jewish Archives Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre.
Hye Bossin’s 1956 booklet Stars of David might be a good place to start. Bossin’s “very casual account of the Jewish element in the theatre history of Toronto” deals with the stage as well as the cinema, and records that the American actor Emanuel Judah may have been the first Jewish actor to play a leading role in Toronto. (The venue was Frank’s Hotel and the year was 1826, when the city was still officially known as York.)
Some chapters later, Bossin turns to film and makes the following observation: “Perhaps the story of the Allens is the first Canadian one worthy of becoming a chapter in the motion picture industry’s volume of great accomplishments.”
The saga of the Allen’s theatre empire began more than a century ago, when Bernard Allen of Pennsylvania sent two of his sons, Jule and J.J., northward to Ontario to find a commercial space suitable for a nickelodeon. The boys were 18 and 17 years old respectively. “They came up in [1906 or] 1907 and they opened a theatre in Brantford, Ont.” recalled their sister-in-law, Bertha Allen, wife of Herbert Allen, in a 1975 taped interview. “They had rented a store and put in chairs and started running some films. The charge was five cents.”
Soon the Allens opened another local theatre and the entire family moved to Brantford; then came a theatre in Calgary and the family moved out west.
Hye Bossin continues the story. “The progress of the Allens was astounding. In a decade and a half the fistful of nickels that marked the opening of the [Brantford] Theatorium in 1906 grew into a $20 million investment in about 50 theatres, including one each in Britain and Russia and several in the United States, as well as a film distribution organization.
“Not many years after they entered the motion picture business the Allen family settled in Toronto, where its members built the city’s finest cinemas, among them the Tivoli, Parkdale, College, St. Clair, Beach and Hollywood.”
But competition was stiff, especially after American-born entrepreneur Nathan L. Nathanson purchased the grand Majestic Theatre on Adelaide Street in 1916 and converted it into the Regent, Toronto’s first deluxe movie palace. This was the first in the Famous Players chain of theatres that Nathanson and his associates built across the country. American film mogul Adolph Zukor was another shark who battled the Allens for film distribution rights in Canada.
Bossin mentions numerous other pioneers, including Manuel Gebertig, Jacob Smith, Abner Appleby, Charles and Hyman Rotenberg, Morris Mentel, Harry Alexander and Sam Lester. The latter two – who were my father’s uncles – and Mentel were in business together. “During the day they ran a little cloak-and-suit manufacturing business, with Harry, who had come from England in 1909, as designer and salesman,” Bossin records. “Within a few years they were operating a half-dozen theatres.”
Besides the taped discussion with Bertha Allen, the OJA holds interviews with Sol Gebirtig, Jennie Goldstein and other informed parties. It also holds historic photos such as a 1926 group portrait of the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of Ontario which had a predominance of Jewish members – among them the Lesters, Harry Alexander, Jake Smith, Isadore Stern, Sam Ulster, Abe Pollakoff, Irving Field, Joe Cohen, Arthur Cohen, probably an Axler or two, and Samuel Bloom of Bloom and Fine. (The formidable B&F chain, which arose in the 1920s, included the Carlton, Century, Christie, Donlands and Vaughan theatres.)
Also among the OJA’s holdings are numerous photos of theatres, the Eglinton among them, designed or renovated by the architectural firm of Kaplan & Sprachman. Other items relate to later generations of film-industry entrepreneurs such as Nat Taylor and Garth Drabinsky. These and other artifacts will certainly be of use when the right historian comes along to tell the important story of the Jewish pioneers who helped to build the motion picture business in Canada.
This article is one of several funded by the J. B. & Dora Salsberg Fund at the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto. This series is in partnership with the Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre and draws on their collections: www.ontariojewisharchives.org
