Presenting the Canadian Cameo Series
“Launched in 2014, CanFilmDay has brought together hundreds of thousands of Canadians, to celebrate our stories and the incredible achievements of our filmmakers. Whether you host a screening or attend one, watch from the comfort of your home or join the party on social media, CanFilmDay is your day to feel connected to our cultures and shared values.” source: https://canfilmday.ca/about/
In celebration of the National Canadian Film Day this year (usually celebrated in mid-April every year), I wanted to highlight some of the not so well known pioneers of early Canadian cinema with a look at the Canadian Cameo Series.
Having graduated from Laurentian High-school in Ottawa in 1978, I was very fortunate to be accepted to the Film Production Program at York University. My goal at the time…to find a job in the Canadian movie industry.
While enrolled in the Film Production program at York, I first became aware of the Canadian Cameo Series films as a summer student at the National Archives of Canada (NAC), in Ottawa. It was there that I first learned about the rich history of early Canadian film. Over the years while employed as a summer student at the NAC, I would learn of the existence of Associated Screen News (ASN), and Gordon Sparling. Check out this newspaper clipping entitled, “About Canadian Movies” from, The Montreal Star, Friday, May 23rd, 1952, by Gerald Clark,
"You may not know it, but movies were first made in Canada 50 years ago. An English photographer, F. Guy Bradford, came over to Montreal in 1902 to do some travelogues for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and liked the country so much that he settled down, in a second-storey "studio" on St. Catherine street, to become a producer and exhibitor..." (source The Montreal Star, Friday, May 23rd, 1952).
"There were other early efforts to bring Canadian stories to the world's screen, and the most ambitious, in 1927, ended in a twist of fate. About a half million dollars was raised by an outfit known as the Canadian International Films, which leased the old studio at Trenton (Ontario). Equipment was modernized, and some of New York's best technicians were placed on the staff......Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, who had achieved fame in World War I as creator of the cartoon character "Old Bill," became supervising director and wrote the scenario. The picture, "Carry On Sergeant!" was completed, with comedian Jimmy Savo in the cast. But it was out-of-date before it was really born. Talkies had come along, and "Carry On Sergeant!" a silent picture, ended in ignominy." (source The Montreal Star, Friday, May 23rd, 1952).
The article also introduces Gordon Sparling of Associated Screen News (ASN), who I would soon learn, not only created the idea behind the Canadian Cameo Series, but was also a key member of the Canadian Army Film & Photo Unit (CFPU) during WWII.
Making the case to bring Gordon Sparling overseas was Gordon’s ASN colleague, Capt. John ‘Jack’ McDougall, Officer in charge of the Canadian Army Film & Photographic Unit. Even though Sparling was senior to McDougall while both had worked at ASN, McDougall found a need for a second in command for the new Film Unit HQ being established in Western Europe (W.E.);
"In the new Film Unit W.E. there exists a vacancy for the appointment of second-in-command. It can be stated that there is no-one in the Canadian Army in England or in Canada possessing these qualifications. Such a person is available in Mr. Gordon Sparling, of Associated Screen News, Montreal. Sparling is the foremost film executive in Canada, a producer and director with 16 to 18 years experience. He is a Canadian and a graduate of the University of Toronto. He was first with the Ontario Motion Picture Board, and later with Paramount and other studios in New York and Hollywood. Since 1932 he has been production supervisor with Associated Screen Studios at Montreal. He has a complete knowledge of the film business in all its aspects. His addition to the Army Film Unit would increase the efficiency immeasurably. As far as military training goes, he joined the McGill C.O.T.C. (Canadian Officers' Training Corps) in 1939. Signed J.E.R. McDougall (Capt.) Canadian Army Film Unit (P.R.O.) 16 APRIL, 1943"
Below is a short list of other staff members employed by ASN, who would serve overseas and/or become members of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit;
Alan Grayston (ARMY) / Jack Hynes (ARMY) / Robert Campbell (ARMY) / William E. Norrish (ARMY) / Ralph Crawford (C.I.R.U. 102) / A.R. Thom (ARMY) / Bert Williamson (ARMY) / Eric Turner (ARMY) / A. Cassidy (ARMY) / A.J. Clarke (RCAF) / Norman Dey (ARMY) / Howard Fogg (DND OTTAWA) / J.A. Grant (ARMY) / A.V. Hargreaves (RCAF) / M.P. Hearns / N.A. Higginson (RCAF) / Allan Ironsides (RCAF) / Harry Jones (CDN FIREFIGHTERS OVERSEAS) / George Moss (RCAF) / C.D. Munro (ARMY) / A.W. Paynter (RCAF) / George Slater (RCAF) / E.A. Thomas (ARMY).
Production still from MUSIC FROM THE STARS: “Zero second! Cameras are up to ‘speed’ ! The director cries ‘Action’! Horace Lapp (at left on piano) and his orchestra synchronize their movements with their pre-recorded music during the filming of a scene for Associated Screen Studios’ new Canadian Cameo, “MUSIC FROM THE STARS”. At the far left on the camera is Alfred Jaquemin, while Ralph Hamilton stands behind him. Gordon Sparling stands nearby, holding a shooting script. Shooting down from atop the stage are cameramen Ross Beasly (left) and J.E.R. McDougall (right). Shot on stage at Associated Screen Studios in 1938. Credit: Library & Archives Canada
"Music From the Stars" is an all-Canadian production played against a modern setting that combines romance with an ultra-smart effectiveness. A modern and gay musical, it marks a new record in Canadian achievement in moving pictures." Source: The Leader Post, Regina, Monday, March 7, 1938.
Three Regina boys (Bill Morton, Clare Kennedy, and Bill Charles) who make their debut in Music From The Stars, a musical production from the Canadian Cameo series;Source: The Leader Post, Regina, Monday, March 7, 1938
Some of the many titles I worked on from the Canadian Cameo Series were, Rhapsody in Two Languages, Back in ’23; Music From the Stars; Borderline Cases; Les Grandes Ecluses/Picking Locks; Grey Owl’s Little Brother/Le P’tit Frere de Grey Owl; Progress on Parade; Sitzmarks the Spot; Borderline Cases…and one of my favourite early Canadian films; The Breadwinner 1932 (presented below). 1986 would be my first year as a permanent employee at the National Film Television and Sound Archives or NFTSA, as the section was known back then. The description for the film in Library & Archives Canada database reads…
Dramatized commercial short film. In this promotional film for Weston's Vitamin-D enriched bread, following his usual bout with cod liver oil, a young boy is persuaded by a friend to buy vitamin enriched bread. When he brings some home, his mother investigates its value. After receiving her doctor's advice in favour of the bread, and after being favourably influenced by the taste of the bread, she allows her family to eat it, being convinced of its benefits. In this film, one of the cast is a superbly trained shepherd dog. Actuality film of Weston bakery interiors is used. http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=filvidandsou&id=18310&lang=eng
In assessing all the films held at LAC, I learned that many of these titles exist in several variations, or versions; Canadian/American; silent/sound; French/English, all in varying degrees of condition, quality, and completion.
In 1949, "The first annual Canadian Film Awards are presented in Ottawa by the Canadian Association for Adult Education under the direction of J. Roby Kidd. Crawley Films wins the film of the year award for The Loon's Necklace. (source: Chronology of the Canadian Film Industry, 1893-1989 Rose-Aimee Todd)"
In a newspaper clipping from, The Gazette, dated Friday, April 29, 1949, a report of the winners from the first Canadian Film Awards highlights one of the Canadian Cameo’s…
"Honorable mention in this class went to the Canadian Cameo Series produced by Associated Screen News, one film of which was the highlights of Dominion news depicted in Canadian Headlines For 1948". source The Gazette, Friday, April 29, 1949.
A newspaper clipping from The Nugget, North Bay, Friday, October 25, 1935, reads,
"Last fall, Associated Screen Studios put out a featurette entitled "Did You Know That?" which was a cinematic compilation of oddities in the Canadian scene..."
"...So successful was this Canadian Cameo release that a second edition is now nearing completion and will be released next month. This is a worthy successor to the first and an even stranger assortment of little-known facts has been assembled after cameramen journeyed to many corners of the Dominion to record these in sound and celluloid. (source: The Nugget, North Bay, Friday, October 25, 1935)..."
The film, Back in ’23, is described in the record description at Library & Archives Canada as a…
"Compilation film on noteworthy events of the year 1923. The camera focuses on a Montreal fashion show and features famous visitors to Canada including: Rudolph Valentino and his bride; Lloyd George; Lord Renfrew (the Prince of Wales incognito); Lord Baden-Powell; etc. Sequences on two famous contests are shown: Canada's Loveliest Child and Miss Canada. The latter is shown as she appeared ten years later with her young son." http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=filvidandsou&id=18270&lang=eng
ABOUT GORDON SPARLING
(Toronto, Ont. 13 Aug. 1900-1994) Pioneer director, scriptwriter and producer of some two hundred films in forty years, the creator of the Canadian Cameo Series, and a man of enormous talent and commitment to Canadian film, who during the thirties was virtually the only creative filmmaker in the commercial film industry.
He joined the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau in 1924 after graduating from the University of Toronto, where he was involved with amateur theatre at Hart House Theatre. He worked as assistant director on Carry on Sergeant! in 1927-28 and spent almost a year with the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in Ottawa. Frustrated with the inertia at the Bureau, he accepted an offer to move to New York to work at Paramount’s Astoria Studios. Two years later, in 1931, he returned to Canada to make an industrial sponsored film for Associated Screen News (ASN). The head of ASN, B.E. Norrish, asked him to undertake the organization of a production department and Sparling accepted on condition that he be allowed to produce a series of theatrical shorts. By 1935 the new unit, operating as Associated Screen Studios, was successful enough, despite the Depression, to permit ASN to build Canada’s first modern, fully equipped sound studio. The Canadian Cameo Series was introduced in 1932 and was produced and (with one exception) written and directed by Sparling until 1954. During the thirties he also made dramatized documentaries, (The Breadwinner, House in Order), in the manner of his earlier Spare Time. During the Second World War, he spent three years in London in charge of the headquarters section of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit, supervising production of propaganda and training films and 106 issues of the Canadian Army newsreel. He returned to ASN in 1946 and remained until 1957 when the production department closed. After working freelance for about a year, he joined the NFB in 1958 and was assigned to the production of Royal River, a film about the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He retired in 1966, but remained active, researching and writing the history of Canadian film.
(SOURCE: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO MORE THAN 650 CANADIAN FILMS & FILMMAKERS BY PETER MORRIS – IRWIN PUBLISHING Toronto Canada. Copyright © 1984 World Film Festival of Toronto Inc., Published by Irwin Publishing Inc. 180 West Beaver Creek Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 1B4. ISBN 0-7725-1505-0)
"...designed for general theatre audiences — no axes to grind, no 'messages' to hammer home, just good entertainment with a Canadian flavour."
- Gordon Sparling in, "The Short Way to Canadian Entertainment" -
ABOUT THE CANADIAN CAMEO SERIES
1932- 54. dir/scen Gordon Sparling (with one exception) prod Gordon Sparling prod co Associated Screen News. English (& 7 French versions).
This series of eighty-five theatrical short films, almost totally the creation of Gordon Sparling, was often inventive, almost always imaginative and rarely dull. It represented Canada’s only continuing creative film effort in the thirties, and if in the forties and fifties it seemed more pedestrian, it still occasionally outshone the NFB’s Canada Carries On series (which was somewhat comparable in subject matter at the time).
Each film was approximately ten minutes in length (with two exceptions) and covered a range of subject matter that was more diverse than comparable films in Canada or elsewhere. Topics ranged from sport, to historical compilations about Canada, to collections of oddities about Canada and Canadians, to city portraits and aspects of Canadian life and activities. If their style today seems a little declamatory, they reflected a great deal more universal flair than any other films in Canada in the thirties (as John Grierson recognized). They were not only Canada’s first theatrical shorts in sound, but also introduced Canadian-composed music into Canadian films and the use of colour (Dufaycolour) in 1939 in Skiways and Royal Banners Over Ottawa (this continued after the war in a pioneer use of Anscocolor).
Sparling also experimented with the use of fast film for indoor location shooting in Carnival On Skates (’33), with the use of prerecorded music (by Horace Lapp) playback in Music from the Stars (’38), with rapid editing and optical printing (which he called “the rhapsodic technique”) in The Thousand Days (’42), All About Emily (’49) and, most notably, Rhapsody in Two Languages (’34), and with dramatizations in Shadow River (33), Sitzmarks the Spot (’48), and All About Emily (’49).
(SOURCE: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO MORE THAN 650 CANADIAN FILMS & FILMMAKERS BY PETER MORRIS – IRWIN PUBLISHING Toronto Canada. Copyright © 1984 World Film Festival of Toronto Inc., Published by Irwin Publishing Inc. 180 West Beaver Creek Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 1B4. ISBN 0-7725-1505-0)
To read more about Gordon Sparling, Associated Screen News, and the Canadian Cameo Series please read the comprehensive study of The Origin of Motion Picture Production in Canada, by Greg Eamon, here.
After many months of research and (and by request from a visitor to the website), I am presenting a comprehensive list of all the known Canadian Cameo Series film titles produced by Associated Screen News, housed at Library & Archives Canada HERE…
…Needless to say, I did not end up working in the movie business exactly, but I was fortunate to have had a career watching Canadian movies for a living, so how cool is that!?
QUESTIONS? – use this form HERE – FEEDBACK? – use this form HERE
Looking to help FUND/DONATE/SHARE in digitizing an early Canadian motion picture film? Contact me via any of the forms above and let’s talk!
Copyright © Dale Gervais 2025
Hi Dale
Thanks for your efforts in expanding our knowledge of early Canadian Film History.
JAF
Thank you James – much appreciated! Dale.