Gordon Sparling

Gordon Sparling was a pioneering director, producer, screenwriter and editor who made about 200 films over 40 years. Sparling was virtually the only creative filmmaker to work in the commercial Canadian film industry during the 1930s, and his Canadian Cameos series of short films were the first major Canadian productions to use sound.
Gordon Sparling was born in Toronto in 1900. Between 1919 and 1923, he attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he became heavily involved with amateur theatre. He joined the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau in 1924, and later spent a year with the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau in Ottawa. He left Canada in 1929 to work at Paramount’s Astoria Studios in New York, and remained there for two years. Upon his return, Sparling was asked to create a production department for the Associated Screen News (ASN) in Montreal, which he did on the condition that he could also produce a series of theatrical shorts. His request was granted, and Sparling launched the Canadian Cameo series of short films. Most of these ran about 10 minutes each and addressed a variety of themes, including music, First Peoples, sports, drama and history. Sparling produced 85 Canadian Cameos between 1932 and 1954.
By 1935, Sparling’s new production unit (operating as Associated Screen Studios) was successful enough to permit ASN to build Canada’s first fully-equipped sound studio and it was here that he experimented with a variety of processes. Sparling spent three years in London during WWII as the head of the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit, where he supervised the production of propaganda and training films. After the war, he returned to ASN and remained there until the production department closed in 1957. He worked as a freelancer for a year, and then joined the National Film Board (NFB) in 1958. Sparling retired from the NFB in 1966.
Following his retirement, Sparling spent his time researching and writing the history of Canadian film. In 1974, he was interviewed for the NFB film Dreamland: A History of Early Canadian Movies 1895-1939, and shortly before his death filmmaker Michael Ostroff completed a short documentary about Sparling’s work, Speaking of Movies. Gordon Sparling died in Toronto in February, 1994.

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Canadian Film Encyclopedia https://cfe.tiff.net//canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/bios/gordon-sparlin