In the months following the end of the Second World War in 1945, the people of Guelph – like Canadians across the country – were trying to “get back to normal” in a world that was irrevocably changed.
Industry had to switch from war production to fill domestic needs that weren’t quite the same as they had been in 1939. Soldiers returning from theatres of military operations around the globe had lost their youthful innocence. Women wanted greater recognition as citizens and as members of the workforce. And the people who considered themselves guardians of social mores wanted to turn back the clock.
One of their first areas of concern was the movie theatre, where they felt the regulations regarding “decent” hours of operation had slipped during the war years.
On Nov. 6, the Guelph Mercury announced with a banner headline: “Midnight Shows Banned From Theatres in Guelph - By-law Regulates Hours for Shows.”
The newspaper article explained city council had decided to put an end to midnight showing of films at Guelph’s movie theatres. It said, “… every theatre and motion picture show within the city must stay closed from 11.55 p.m. (midnight) until 8 o’clock on the morning of the following day in the week, except on December 24 and December 31 when those days do not fall on a Sunday, or when special permission is granted specifically.”
It wasn’t the films themselves that drew city council’s disapproval. That week, Guelph movie lovers could see a crime drama called The Glass Key with Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Brian Donlevy at the Royal; Salty O’Rourke, also a crime drama, with Gail Russell and Alan Ladd (evidently a busy actor) at the Capitol; and a murder mystery called The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry with George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ella Raines at the Palace.
What city council objected to was the showing of movies at a late hour when respectable, hard-working folks should be home in bed. Nor did they want movies to begin playing on Saturday night at an hour that would carry them over to Sunday morning, causing them to be technically in violation of the Lord’s Day Act.
According to the Mercury, many Guelph residents had signed a petition demanding stricter regulation of the operating hours of hairdressing salons and beauty parlours. City council passed a resolution to look into the opening hours of those dens of feminine vanity at a later date. Meanwhile, in a pragmatic act of social responsibility, it passed a bylaw which required the owners and employees of such businesses to be licensed.
Beauty shops and hairdressers would also have to observe set standards of sanitation and submit to inspections by health and medical officers. No one complained that this public health measure was a tyrannical infringement on their democratic rights.
City council also dealt with a problem brought to attention by the finance committee. It reached the decision that “no more dances be performed in the city hall auditorium, and that the city solicitor be instructed to amend the present by-law accordingly; and also amend the by-law so that the city hall auditorium will be rented only on the application to the City Council.”
Apparently, the time had come for city hall to drop the role of hosting those dances that had been so popular during the war.
While some issues were being dealt with at the municipal level, another law was in the making in Ottawa. The House of Commons gave first reading to a bill introduced by MP R.W. Gladstone, Liberal representative for Wellington South. The bill would bar “gun-pointing” scenes from magazine covers.
At that time, crime magazines – including comic books – were considered a bad influence by educators, the clergy and many parents. They were very popular, especially with teenage boys, but critics dismissed them as cheap trash that sensationalized violence. Gladstone’s bill would be an addition to Section 124 of the Criminal Code, which made it an offence to point at any person a firearm or air gun without lawful reason.
Karl Homuth, the Progressive Conservative MP for Waterloo South, asked, “You’re not going to do away with Superman, are you?”
Gladstone didn’t explain that Superman didn’t carry a gun and didn’t have to worry about anybody pointing one at him. However, he did explain, “It is entirely wrong and detrimental to the morals of young boys that they should continue to be permitted to observe and study on magazine covers such … pictures depicting shooting scenes which can only tend to educate them to think that there is nothing wrong in pointing a gun at a person … More than one newsstand dealer has told me the elimination of gun-pointing pictures would not affect adversely the sale of good detective stories.”
Movies and beauty parlours, dances and magazines; none escaped the long arm of a city council trying to get the Royal City back to its pre-war normalcy.
We can only wonder what the councillors might have thought if they’d known what was just around the corner: rock and roll, and television with its line-up of gun-toting cops, crooks and cowboys!
