The "Nabes": Toronto's Wonderful Neighbourhood Movie Houses. (Books).

The "Nabes": Toronto's Wonderful Neighbourhood Movie Houses, by John Sebert, Mosaic Press, Toronto, 145 pages, $25.00

The "Nabes" is a Toronto-centric look at independent movie theatres that dotted the urban landscape from the 1920s, the golden era of silent cinema, to the 1950s when fierce competition from the larger chains, television and cinemascope killed off many of the "nabes," or neighbourhood theatres. Photographer John Sebert has done a fine job tracking down these 86 time capsules, all reproduced with fine archival photographs and accompanied with a photo, by himself, of the existing building as it stands today. Remarkably, most of the original structures still exist, merely converted into another use - a bank, a McDonald's, a computer shop.

One prime example of this transformation is the Victory Theatre at the northwest corner of Spadina and Dundas. Built in 1922, on the rubble of an older theatre, the Victory began life as the Standard producing Yiddish theatre. In 1935, it became the Strand showing Hollywood fare. Then 20th Century, an independent chain operated by Nat Taylor, took over in 1940 and, being the early days of the Second World War, logically renamed it the Victory. It morphed into an upscale strip joint in the 1960s and 1970s, and eventually became the Golden Harvest Theatre in 1975, catering to the large Chinese community that had grown up around it. What Sebert leaves out of his account is that the Victory was the best place to hear the early punk bands, including the legendary night Rush played on a double bill with the New York Dolls.

Sebert's account of the various histories is light and breezy and he follows the photo section with comments about growing up in Toronto and watching movies from the likes of Norman Jewison, former Toronto mayor David Crombie, and Goin' down the Road director, Don Shebib. Sebert leads with an equally breezy introduction that gives a historical overview but gets one salient fact wrong. He claims that the Allen brothers, who operated the first Canadian distribution and exhibition company of any note, went bankrupt in 1923 because their theatres were too lavish. It is well documented that Famous Players Canadian Corporation (FPCC) waged a vicious bidding war against the Allens and refused them the rights to Mary Pickford films, which were being produced by Paramount Pictures, which in turn was owned by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation in the United States. Effectively, it meant that Adolph Zukor, who was the chairman of Famous Players-Lasky, drove the Allens out of business and through FPCC, he bought all their theatres at a bargain-basement price. Still, given the fact that Famous Players, the corporate heir to FPCC, gets a generous acknowledgement at the front end of the book, this historical oversight is not surprising. It is rather ironic, however, that a book dedicated to the independent sprit of film exhibition - most of the "nabes" were run by the smaller chains or were mom-and-pop operations - should be given the blessing by the biggest corporate giant of them all, who drove most of them out of business in the first place.