''Saturday Night at the Movies'' was a weekly

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

series on

TVOntario TVO Media Education Group (often abbreviated as TVO and stylized on-air as tvo) is a publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario ...

, the public educational television network in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The series presented classic

movies A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

, followed by interviews and feature segments with directors,

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

s and other people involved in making the films presented."Remembering nearly 40 years of Saturday Night at the Movies: As the series' last broadcast draws near, former hosts and staff share memories". ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'', August 29, 2013. The show was initially formatted in this way due to requirements that all programming shown on TVO (including dramatic programming) needed to contain educational elements, which was usually accomplished by including interviews and analysis of the programming. Nevertheless, even after these requirements were dropped, the format was maintained; all told, the series presented almost 1,500 films and over 1,000 interviews. The show was produced for much of its run by Risa Shuman.Richard Ouzonian
"The secret to Elwy Yost’s success"
''

'', July 24, 2011.

Broadcast history

Elwy Yost era

First aired on March 30, 1974, the program was originally hosted by

Elwy Yost Elwy McMurran Yost, (July 10, 1925 – July 21, 2011) was a Canadian television host, best known for hosting CBC Television's weekday '' Passport to Adventure'' series from 1965 to 1967, TVOntario's weekday ''Magic Shadows'', from 1974 until th ...

. The first film shown was

Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, Film producer, producer and playwright. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films are known ...

's '' Through a Glass Darkly''. During Yost's 25-year tenure as host, he showed a variety of foreign films, but tended to concentrate on Hollywood-produced films from the 1930s through the 1950s, slowly expanding into also showing films from the 1960s and 1970s as the series progressed. Films shown spanned all genres; Yost famously said that of all the films he had ever seen in his life, he had disliked only two. For a number of years, however, the show was unable to broadcast films from the

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Di ...

studio, as TVOntario's transmitter in Windsor created a programming rights conflict with stations in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

."TVO prepares for a revamp ; But so far no host to replace Elwy Yost". ''

'', July 19, 2000. Although the hosts did interview actors and film directors, they often interviewed film crew, such as cinematographers and film editors, who much more rarely receive widespread publicity.Mark Kearney and Randy Ray, ''Whatever Happened To...?: Catching Up with Canadian Icons''.

Dundurn Press Dundurn Press is one of the largest Canadian-owned book publishing companies of adult and children's fiction and non-fiction. The company publishes Canadian literature, history, biography, politics and arts. Dundurn has about 2500 books in print, ...

, 2006. . pp. 54-55. In his final decade hosting the show, Yost lived in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, and would travel to Toronto to prepare many episodes of the show at once. Yost retired as host of the series in 1999.Changing faces: Taking over Elwy Yost's host job bittersweet for Shelagh Rogers". ''

Waterloo Region Record The ''Waterloo Region Record'' (formerly ''The Record'') is the daily newspaper covering Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, including the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, as well as the surrounding area. Since December 1998, the ''Re ...

'', October 9, 1999. The last film he presented was, atypically, a then-recent Hollywood blockbuster: Yost chose ''

Speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quanti ...

'' to conclude his run as host, as it was written by his son, screenwriter Graham Yost. Around the same time as his retirement, he was inducted into the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

After Yost

Soon after Yost's retirement, the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris appointed

Isabel Bassett Isabel Bassett (born August 23, 1939) is a Canadian broadcaster and former politician. From 1999 until 2005 she was the chair and CEO of TVOntario/TFO, Ontario's provincial public television network. She has been a controversial figure at times ...

as chair of TVOntario, with a mandate to refocus the network's broadcast schedule more clearly on education. Although there was some concern that the network would lose ''Saturday Night at the Movies'', its highest-rated program, Bassett instead negotiated an agreement with

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

to include the series in its film studies curriculum. Yost was replaced as host for one season by Shelagh Rogers, concurrently with her continuing role as host of CBC Stereo's classical music program ''Take Five''. When Rogers became the host of CBC Radio's morning news program '' This Morning'' in 2000, she left ''Saturday Night at the Movies'', which briefly changed to a hostless format. At this time, the series added a Sunday night companion series, ''Sunday Night at the Cinema'', which focused more on international film. The program was then hosted by

Johanna Schneller Johanna Schneller is an American-born Canadian film journalist and television personality, currently the host of the film talk show '' The Filmmakers'' on CBC Television. A freelance celebrity interviewer for such publications as '' Vanity Fair'', ...

for two seasons beginning in 2004. The show's final host, for the remainder of its run, was Thom Ernst."Curtain prepares to close on TV show: Saturday Night at the Movies wraps up on TVO after 39 years". ''

'', August 23, 2013. On November 13, 2012, it was announced that TVO would cancel ''Saturday Night at the Movies'' as of the end of the 2012-2013 season, amidst budget cuts incurred by the network. The final edition of ''Saturday Night at the Movies'' was broadcast on August 31, 2013, featuring two foreign films as its last movies: ''

The Lives of Others ''The Lives of Others'' (german: link=no, Das Leben der Anderen, ) is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berlin ...

'' (at 8 P.M.), and '' Black Book'' (starting at 10:50 P.M.) Peter Howell
"Saturday Night at the Movies, when going to the movies meant staying in"
''

'', August 23, 2013. Copies of many of the show's interviews have been donated to the archives of the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saturday Night At The Movies TVO original programming 1974 Canadian television series debuts Canadian motion picture television series 2013 Canadian television series endings 1970s Canadian variety television series 1980s Canadian variety television series 1990s Canadian variety television series 2000s Canadian variety television series 2010s Canadian variety television series