# 20 ~ Highlights from the Oscars, Then and Now

I have to admit, I've never been particularly interested in watching the Oscars.  Other people block off the evening, invite their friends over, prepare special menus and even get into formal wear to watch it all on their televisions.  It does come at a good time, with the celebrations and the hype breaking up the winter blahs, when spring is still a few weeks away.  I absolutely love going to the cinema, but I think that my disinterest in the Oscars might stem from the fact that I don't care what other people have to say about what I've seen.  Either I like a movie, or I don't, and if doesn't matter to me what a critic has to say, then I'm disinclined to see how a movie performs at the Oscars.  Also, to me a movie is a package deal.  I tend not to take it apart and measure up the ingredients, the acting, the music, the sound or music quality or the way in which it was filmed.  I like it when all those elements are cohesive and work well together for a good finished product.

Toronto has a part in the Oscars, of course.  For years, we've been providing fodder for "Hollywood's big night".  We've contributed some of the leading men and women in the movies, and of course, we've been the backdrop for many of them.  Dozens, even hundreds, of movies have been made in Toronto over the last several decades.  "Chicago", starring Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Renee Zellwegger was rather famously filmed in Toronto.  The whole movie was made here, with none of it actually being filmed in Chicago ~ a fact that made the Mayor of Chicago discontented enough to run a scathing editorial in all of the local newspapers.  In most cases, Toronto is rarely actually Toronto; it's Chicago, or Boston, or New York, or every so often, even more exotic locales in Europe or the Middle East.  Last year, there was a great deal of hype about "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World".  Not only was it filmed in Toronto, it was actually set here, too.  The creator of the original series of graphic novels, Bryan Lee O'Malley, had been born in London, Ontario, but set his original work in Toronto, and fortunately, it remained the same in the film version.  The Toronto setting of the film resulted in a great deal of buzz last year.  Last year's "RED" starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren was another film shot in Toronto.  Helen Mirren, who's last major Hollywood role was as the eponymous character in "The Queen", stayed at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, where several scenes in "RED" were filmed.  A visit by the actual Queen in the summer of last year resulted in the sovereign's signature appearing back to back with Helen Mirren's in the hotel's VIP guest book.

NOW : The skylines of Chicago (above) and Toronto (below).  Toronto has been the backdrop in hundreds of movies and television shows, and has portrayed cities all over the world, but rarely gets the chance to play itself.





THEN : In 2010, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" became one of the first big release pictures to not only be filmed in Toronto, but to actually be set here, too.

A short listing of other movies to be made, at least partially, in Toronto over recent years includes "Adventures in Babysitting" (1987), "American Psycho" (2000), along with its 2002 sequel, "Bowling for Columbine" (2002), "Brokeback Mountain" (2005), "A Christmas Story" (1983), "Chloe" (2009), "Cinderella Man" (2005),  "Cocktail" (made in 1988, when Tom Cruise was still a young heart throb and not front cover material for the supermarket tabloids), "Fantastic Four" (2005),  "Good Will Hunting" (1997), "Hairspray" (2007), "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" (2007), "Twister" (1996),  "X-Men" (2000), as well as several installments of the Police Academy and Saw film series.

THEN : "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" (2007) was badly panned by some critics, but I liked it, and it was fun seeing all the Toronto landmarks that appeared in the movie, including King Street West and Allan Gardens.

The other major contribution that Toronto makes to the Oscars is the Toronto International Film Festival.  Every September, celebrities, media and regular every day film buffs gather in Toronto to see the latest that Hollywood has to offer.  Toronto's film festival has come to be regarded as one of the best in the world, second only Cannes, perhaps, for its notoriety.  The screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival have come to be regarded as a kind of touchstone for figuring out who will go on to win big at the Oscars.

NOW : The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the world's best, and is often a key indicator of who will win Oscars.

So, for those of you watching the Oscars tonight, enjoy the festivities.  Get in to the Hollywood hype but don't forget the Toronto connections to what Hollywood churns out.  To close, here is a brief list of some of the historical highlights from the Oscar's history.

A History of the Academy Awards

1929 : the first awards ceremony is held on May 16.  The awards were presented at a brunch held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  There was an audience of about 270 people, many of whom went to an after party at the Mayfair Hotel.  A total of fifteen statuettes were handed out, celebrating the leading contributions to the film industry made in 1927 and 1928.  A ticket to the awards ceremony cost $5.00.

1930 : a year after it started, the awards ceremony had its first scandal.  Toronto's own Mary Pickford, the world's first internationally renowned movie star, had chaired the voting committee.  She won the "best actress" award for her role in the movie "Coquette".  The rules were quickly changed so that no one so closely associated with the selection of winners could themselves be the recipient of a major award.  "Coquette", incidentally, was Mary Pickford's first role in a talking movie.  Although Pickford had initially embraced talking movies, her career quickly faded after they took hold, and she retired from acting in 1933.  Pickford's next Oscar came in 1976, when she won a lifetime achievement award.  She died in Santa Monica three years later. 

THEN : "Coquette" was Mary Pickford's first talking film role, and a hit at the Oscars.  She controversially won the award for Best Actress, even though she had played a prominent role in setting up not only the Motion Picture Academy but also the awards that they hand out.

1932 : Walt Disney thanks the academy for his "Oscar", and the nickname became a reference to the statuettes handed out, and ultimately, for the ceremonies themselves. No one seems absolutely certain who first coined the term "Oscar".  Margaret Herrick, the executive secretary for the academy, is said to have remarked in 1931 on the resemblance of the statuette to her Uncle Oscar.  Eleanor Lilleberg, the executive secretary to Louis B. Mayer, was of Norwegian origin.  She claimed that the statuette reminded her of the Norwegian ruler, King Oscar II.  The original model for the statuette was a Mexican film maker and actor named Emilio Fernandez, and the original sculptor was George Stanley.  The academy officially adopted the nickname "Oscar" in 1939.

1938 : floods in California postpones the awards ceremony for a week, and few stars bother to attend when it is rescheduled.  

1940 : Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Oscar.  She won the best supporting actress award for her role as "Mammy" in "Gone With the Wind".  Much acclaim was made of her winning the award, although she was seated at the back of the auditorium, near the kitchen.  In her later career, many would criticize McDaniel for playing servant roles.  On hearing the criticism, she once quipped, "I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be one for $7.00"

1953 : the awards are broadcast on television for the first time, live from RKO Pantages Theatre. NBC pays $100,000 for rights.

1960 : the awards ceremony bags its biggest ever share of the percentage of television viewers, with 82.4% of American televisions tuned into to watch the awards ceremony. "Ben-Hur" wins for best movie.

1971 : George C. Scott refuses an Oscar for his epic role in "Patton".  He actually distinguished himself by rejecting the same Oscar twice.  A letter to the academy accompanied his first rejection, and his missive stated that he "didn't feel himself to be in competition with other actors".  When he was invited to the ceremony a second time, he said, "The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don't want any part of it."  He stayed at home instead, and watched soccer on television.

THEN : Both George C. Scott (above) and Marlon Brando (below) refused their Oscars for what was, for each of them, a landmark role.  "Patton" remains one of Scott's best known works, and "The Godfather" remains a canonical Brando movie.

1973 : Marlon Brando follows in Scott's footsteps, and turns down his Oscar for "The Godfather".  For decades, Brando had been an outspoken representative for several civil rights movements, calling for an end to things like racial segregation in America.  Instead of attending the Oscars himself, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather, a noted American aboriginal spokesperson, in his place.  Littlefeather appeared in full Apache dress, and used the opportunity to protest the depiction of American aboriginals in movies and television. You can see a clip of Littlefeather at the Oscars here :

Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars  

1981 : Oscars delayed for twenty-four hours after John Hinckley shoots Ronald Reagan.  Hinckley had become obsessed with Jodie Foster, stalking her, sending her love notes and trying to call her on the telephone.  When Foster continued to ignore him, Hinckley made an attempt on the president's life to impress her.  It's one of the reasons why Jodie Foster has kept such a private life, away from the media attention that has infiltrated the personal lives of so many other celebrities.

In recent years, the Oscars have received their lowest television ratings in the six decades that they've been aired.  2003, and then 2008, set records for the lowest numbers of viewers watching the Oscars.  The awards are losing the attention of younger viewers, and this year's co-hosts, James Franco and Anne Hathaway, were chosen at least in part to attract younger viewers.

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Interested in cinema?  My new "Cinema and Scandal" tour through downtown Toronto starts this spring.  From vaudeville, to burlesque, to the gritty days of Yonge Street in the 1970s, this one covers it all.  Contact me at richard@muddyyorktours.com or (416) 487-9017.

Check out http://www.muddyyorktours.com/ for information on other tours.

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# 19 ~ The Temple Building at Bay and Richmond streets, Then and Now



THEN : Contrary to popular belief, Queen Victoria was often amused.  Sadly, she never made it to Toronto, so there's no way to tell what she would have thought about seeing our bustling Victorian city in person.

January 22nd, 2011, marked the 110th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria.  For the most part, the anniversary went unobserved.  In one way, that's not particularly surprising; eleven decades is a long time to hold on to such an event, particularly since there isn't anyone left in Toronto who actually remembers hearing the news of her death.  In another way, though, it provides a bit of a contrast.  Queen Victoria has been the most commemorated British or Canadian monarch out of the whole lot, and here in Canada, there are more streets, schools, parks and various other landmarks named after Queen Victoria, than anywhere else in the world.  Torontonians had an obsession with her.  She came to the throne in the summer of 1837.  Toronto was still little more than a colonial backwater when, as a young woman of eighteen years old, she inherited the kingdom from her uncle, William IV.  We'd only been a city for three years, and six months after her accession, we threw that little debacle known as the Rebellion of 1837.  But at the time of her death nearly 65-years later, Toronto had passed through several growth spurts, and had become an "Imperial City".  We still considered ourselves "British", and Toronto was even nicknamed "The Queen City" in Victoria's honour.

There was a building craze in Toronto throughout Victoria's reign, especially after a great fire in 1849 destroyed a lot of our Georgian remnants.  From 1850 to 1900, we would keep building bigger and higher, racing to build skyscrapers that would compete with anything in America.   Size mattered, but style did, too, and we built our city with a kind of architectural flare that would make city planners boast that Toronto was like a "Paris by the lake".

There were so many Victorian contributions to Toronto's built heritage that I've decided to make "Victorian Toronto" a recurring theme here.  Some of the gems are still with us - "Old City Hall" (1899) is probably the foremost example, but there are many others - but sadly many of them are gone, too.  I will be adding articles on both the saved and the lost.  A half a century after Queen Victoria died, Toronto went through a demolition craze, and sadly, much has disappeared.  It culminated in the 1960s, when city planners wanted all of Toronto to look like Nathan Phillips Square - modern, concrete, and often brutal.



THEN : The Temple Building, built 1895 at the northwest corner of Richmond and Bay streets, and demolished in 1970.  The west wing of "Old" City Hall (1899) is visible in the background.



My very first choice for "Victorian Toronto" is the Temple Building, which was constructed in 1895 at the northwest corner of Bay and Richmond streets.  It is one of those Victorian pearls that's disappeared.  Demolished in 1970, it is one that is still in the memory of a certain generation of Torontonians, and it was one of the last of our grand Victorian buildings to die by demolition. 

The Temple Building was one of Toronto's earliest "skyscrapers".  It was home to the headquarters of the Independent Order of Foresters (sometimes abbreviated simply to "IOF", a benevolent and fraternal society that also helped to manage the financial interests of its members.  The building, located at the northwest corner of Richmond and Bay streets, was an iconic Toronto landmark that towered over downtown Toronto for seventy-five years.

THEN : An IOF postcard shows off the Temple Building, a landmark in Toronto from 1895 until 1970.

When the Temple Building went up in 1895, it was the tallest building in Toronto.  It originally soared to a then-dizzying height of nine storeys, and a tenth storey was added in 1901.  The "skyscraper" - any building over maybe five or six storeys - was a new innovation in Toronto.  We were trying to prove that we were neck-and-neck with any American city when it came to construction, and yet, it was customary to have a veteran American architect consult on such a project here in Toronto.  However, the Temple Building was to be an exclusively "Canadian" project.  The architect of the Temple Building was a Canadian named George W. Gouinlock, and he supervised every aspect of the building's construction.  The frames of Toronto's buildings had evolved since the 1790s, from wood, to stone or brick, to metal.  The Temple Building had a cast-iron frame; it was, in fact, one of the last cast-iron frame buildings in Toronto before steel took over.  Now, Toronto's modern skyscrapers are several dozen storeys of glass and steel, but it was iron that would hold up the weight of the Temple Building.  The brick and stone walls were sturdy, too, and were up to four feet thick.  The weight and texture of the walls helped to blend the Temple Building into the "Romanesque" type of architecture that is exemplified today in nearby buildings like "Old" City Hall, and the Confederation Life Building, located along Richmond Street East between Yonge and Victoria streets.

THEN : This panoramic photograph from 1904 shows the Temple Building towering over Toronto.

Unlike a lot of other Romanesque style buildings, the Temple Building was relatively simple on the outside, unadorned with a great deal of elaborate carving.  The beautiful detailing was on the inside, from the tiles on the floors to the hand-carved panels with their marble insets.  Ornate design would merge with sleek technology, and the Temple Building's elevator - one of the first electric carriages in Toronto, and said to be one of the city's fastest - would herald in the advances that came with the "skyscraper era" over the next century.  The Temple Building would hold the record of Toronto's tallest building for only a few years - the 1899 City Hall and the 1905 Trader's Bank Building were taller - but it was the Temple Building that ushered in a professional revitalization of Bay Street.  Photographs show that in the 1890s, Bay Street was "slummy" and undeveloped; today, it is Canada's financial nerve centre.  The transition started with the construction of the Temple Building.

THEN : An undated photograph shows a dinner held by the Masons in the Temple Building.  It's hard to imagine such an elegant affair being held in one of Toronto's modern glass and steel skyscrapers.

THEN : This photograph from 1920 shows Queen Street from the front of "Old" City Hall, with the Temple Building rising up in the central background.

THEN : Looking south down Bay Street from Queen Street in 1930.  Bay Street has finally become professionally developed, thanks in no small part to the construction of the Temple Building.

It all lasted until 1970, when the Temple Building was demolished to make way for a new 32-storey office tower that came with a construction price tag of $20-million.  The building stands at 390 Bay Street.  A firm known as Teperman and Sons, Ltd., oversaw the demolition of the Temple Building.  The name on their signs became synonymous with the architectural pillaging of Toronto.  The last tenants of the Temple Building left the premises at the end of June, 1970, and within six-months, it was gone. 



THEN : The 1970 demolition of the Temple Building.  The Teperman signs made the company synonymous with demolition in Toronto for several years.

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THEN : The 1970 demolition of the Temple Building.

In July of 1970, the Globe and Mail ran an editorial on the demolition of the Temple Building.  It read, in part :

"Want to see a monument destroyed?  Go down to the corner of Bay and Richmond streets, and watch them make gravel of the Temple Building.  It won't go easily or prettily, because it wasn't built with destruction in mind.  It was intended to last like the pyramids. Will the be a headstone to mark where it stood?"

No doubt, that last question was a rhetorical one, but today, there is no commemorative plaque on the Temple Building's successor.

THEN : The Temple Building just prior to the demolition of 1970.

THEN : The Temple Building just prior to the demolition of 1970.

NOW : The site of the Temple Building today, showing the 32-storey, $20-million office tower that took its place.





# 18 ~ Cinemas & Scandals, Then and Now (Part Two)

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# 17 ~ Cinemas & Scandals, Then and Now (Part One)

All in all, Toronto has a  pretty clean reputation.  Sometimes, we brag about the low crime rates and how safe our city is.   Sometimes, we complain that we can't smoke in bars and can't buy a bottle of wine in the corner store at 7 o'clock on a Sunday night.  Some of us even avert our eyes when we get a whiff of that sweet smell of a funny brown little cigarette being smoked, not quite clandestinely enough, as we promenade through a public park or take a stroll down Yonge Street.  So, we generally accept the pros and the cons of Toronto's reputation of being "Toronto the Good".

It started with all those churches in Toronto back in the 1800s.  The Presbyterians got an early start here, and they had an avid, hotheaded love of the Puritanical.  They had a dour love of their church and its ways, and they tried to press it on our early city with an iron will.  It may come as a surprise that our first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, spawned an illegitimate son in his teenage years back in Scotland.  The child simply had to have a baptism; even the parents of bastard children agreed that this was a necessity.  So Mackenzie and the child's unwed mother sat in the middle of circle in the local Presbyterian church, and made a public confession of their sin of "fornication".  It was a mandatory humiliation that needed to be undertaken before the child could be acknowledged.  He left his infant son, and lit out for England and later Canada in search of work.  He never saw the child's mother again.

The Methodists, too, were an early religious sect in Toronto.  Their first church went up near King and Jordan streets in 1818, and to prevent any distraction during Divine Worship, the men sat on one side of the church and the women on the other.  The Methodists had an influence in early Toronto that was greater than their numbers.  Because of the influence that the Methodists had here, Toronto was nicknamed "the Methodist Rome", and they put their stamp on the morality of our city.  There was no theatre on a Sunday, of course, and it was illegal for money to change hands in an act of commerce on the Lord's Day.  Drinking was looked down upon throughout the week. 

Hart Massey was a good example of the upright ~ and uptight ~ Methodist gentleman in Victorian Toronto.  He gave an endowment to build a concert hall and in 1894 it opened its doors as "Massey Hall".  Massey was a staunch Methodist, and since theatre was disapproved of, he stipulated that it only be used to stage concerts.  To this day, Massey Hall only features concerts, and never plays.  One wonders what pious old Hart Massey would have made of some of the acts that have played his hall in recent years, like Eddie Vedder, KISS, Iggy Pop and Marilyn Manson.  He insisted that the lease to Massey Hall stipulate that no alcohol would be served on the premises for ninety-nine years after it opened.  Take a close look at the billboards next time you walk past Massey Hall.  You'll see that the lounge in the basement, opened after a late twentieth-century renovation, is called "Centuries Bar".

THEN : The auditorium of Massey Hall in 1890.

THEN : This photograph from 1890 shows Hart Massey's vision for Massey Hall on a Sunday ...

NOW : ... and this recent photograph shows the sort of thing that goes on in Massey Hall today.

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SUNDAY  SHOPPING!!

Shopping on a Sunday was a big taboo in Toronto, throughout much of the nineteenth century.  The laws were strictly enforced, and shops even got in on the act.  The big downtown stores turned away customers and shunned those passersby with a lust for commerce in their eye, by drawing drapes over their store windows.  Even "Window Shopping" was forbidden on a Sunday. 

I remember being a kid at the end of my high school career, when the management of the big local shopping mall announced that they would finally open on a Sunday.  Some of the retailers were for it, and others were against it, but they had all signed a lease and all had to comply with the mall rules.  One store protested by only allowing one customer in to their store at a time.  And this was, perhaps, in the last few months of the 1980s.  The 1990s were just around the bend, and Sunday commerce was still a hotly debated topic of conversation in "Toronto the Good".

That was two decades ago, now, and recently there has been buzz about allowing major malls, like the Eaton Centre, to open on formerly "off limits" Statutory Holidays, like Christmas. 

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THEN : Eaton's College Street store (now more commonly called "College Park"), shown here in 1956.  The windows are curtained over to help prevent shoppers from their sinful commercial desires on a Sunday.

THEN : The windows of Eaton's College Street store curtained off on a Sunday in 1956.

THEN : The windows of Eaton's College Street store curtained off on a Sunday in 1956.

THEN : The windows of Eaton's College Street store curtained off on a Sunday in 1956.  When the new Eaton's mall on Yonge Street, between Queen and Dundas streets, opened in 1977, it replaced the College Street site as Toronto's "Eaton Centre."

NOW : Christmas shoppers at the Eaton Centre.  Perhaps soon, we will have an extension on "last minute Christmas shopping", and will be able to round out the lists on the morning of the big day.  No more curtains will cover the windows, or keep the shoppers at bay.  "Away to the window, they'll fly in a flash, to tear open the shutters and bring in the cash ..." 

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TORONTO  BURLESQUE!!

But while the store windows were still sashed on a Sunday, before the malls were open, and long before Iggy Pop or Marilyn Manson flung themselves across the stage of Massey Hall, there was an illicit underground in Toronto.  The term "burlesque" has been around for hundreds of years, and in its early incarnations, it was any form of theatre that used caricature or parody to poke fun at more serious subjects.  By the last few decades of the 1800s, Victorian burlesque was often a musical that poked fun at a well known play, ballet or opera.  Gradually, though, more and more risque elements were thrown into Burlesque theatre.

By the early 20th century, the burlesque seen in North America was a blend of satire, performance art and early "adult entertainment".   Almost all of the performers were women, and the show included elaborate sets, colourful costumes, appropriate music and lighting, and sometimes, a bit of a novelty, like fire-breathing or contortionism.  The comedy and the "spoof" were still there, but the plot was becoming less important.  The women on the burlesque stages wore as little as they could get away with, and dialogue and dancing were increasingly sexually suggestive.  By the 1930s, it had boiled down to a striptease.  The burlesque shows got away with as much as they could.  From the 1940s through the 1970s, the burlesque dancers of Toronto couldn't go "all the way", but it was the closest thing to on-stage nudity that their customers could see.

THEN : By the middle of the twentieth century, burlesque had transformed from clever musicals based on parody, to the early versions of today's "adult entertainment".  Burlesque was a popular form of "underground entertainment" in Toronto from the 1940s through to the 1970s.  Although full nudity was prohibited, the performers would get away with showing as much as possible.  There were only two prominent venues for risque burlesque in "Toronto the Good".

Between 1945 and 1975, there were two principal venues in Toronto for "Burlesque" style entertainment.  One was the "Lux" theatre, located at 360 College Street near Bellevue Avenue.  It opened as the "Bellevue" in 1937, with seating for 787 patrons.  It only lasted two decades before closing in 1958.  Now a retail block, mostly made up of computer stores, has taken its place. 





THEN : The Lux Theatre at 260 College Street in the 1950s.

THEN : Audiences line up outside the Lux Theatre on College Street in the 1950s, responding to signs that advertised the "exotic" and "adult entertainment".

THEN : Burlesque beauties arrive at the Lux on College Street in the 1950s.

THEN : On stage at the Lux Theatre in the 1950s.

Toronto's other burlesque theatre had a longer run.  The "Standard" theatre opened in 1921, on the northeast corner of Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street West.  There was seating for 1,272 patrons.  Originally, from 1921, it was a venue for the nearby Jewish community in Kensington Market.  Classic Yiddish works were performed, and even some other pieces, like Shakespeare, were translated into Yiddish and put on stage at the Standard.   Even before its days of showing burlesque, the Standard was home to scandal of a different stripe.  It was the home of Toronto's Jewish left-wing political activism, and was used by groups like the Progressive Arts Club.  In 1929, Toronto police raided the Standard when they received a tip that it was hosting an event to commemorate the death of Vladimir Lenin.  The "Standard" era came to an end in 1935, when the theatre was closed and renamed "the Strand".  It became a more mainstream movie theatre. 

The name changed again, in 1945, when the theatre became the "Victory" Theatre.  This was when it became a home to burlesque.  Along with the Lux, on College Street, it showed the closest thing to nudity that Toronto's theatre goers could get.  The Lux and the Strand were both popular with local university students, and operated in close proximity to the University of Toronto campus.  When the Lux closed in 1958, the Victory became Toronto's only showplace for burlesque, and for nearly two decades, it enjoyed a monopoly.  Eventually, though, it began facing competition from adult theatres and modern strip clubs.  The Victory faded and was closed in 1975.  By the time the Victory closed, the surrounding neighbourhood was now prominently Chinese.  The Victory soon became a Chinese language cinema, and was known as the "Golden Harvest" and then the "Mandarin".  The cinema was finally closed in 1990, a victim of all of those pirated, bootleg DVDs for sale in Chinatown.  The building still stands; there is a branch of the Royal Bank on the west side of the building.  Along Dundas, towards the east side of the building, are a couple of discount variety stores.  This is where the backstage of the theatre would have been.  Every time I walk past, I can't help imagine those men who formed the beginnings of Toronto's "trench coat set", waiting outside in the hopes of catching a glimpse of one of the Victory's dancers.

THEN : The Standard Theatre, as it was then known, at the northeast corner of Dundas and Spadina in 1930.

THEN : The Victory Burlesque Theatre in the 1950s.

NOW : The site of the Standard Theatre, and then the Victory Burlesque Theatre, today.



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THEN : A poster for "Hollywood Burlesque", a film released in 1949.  It was made up entirely of a burlesque show that had been recorded the year before.  Hillary Dawn was the closest thing that the movie had to a "big name", and while she was a moderately popular dancer at the time, she is largely unknown today.

By the 1970s, burlesque was a dying art.  The laws had loosened and even wilder stuff was now allowed on stage.  The sleaze would move east, to Yonge Street, and throughout the 1970s, the shows got worse and worse.  If you think Yonge Street south of Bloor is bad now, it can't shake a stick at how bad things got back a few decades a go.  A clean up would come at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1980s, but perhaps what was eradicated would make good content for "Part Two" ... coming soon.

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My new "HOLLYWOOD NORTH : Cinema and Scandal" tour will be coming soon.  Look for it on the website :

Muddy York Walking Tours

... or contact me by e-mail at richard@muddyyorktours.com

  

We cover Toronto's burlesque era, of course, but also discuss some of the personal scandals that befell some of Toronto's early performers and theatre managers, and a whole lot more.  Contact me for details!