Just lost a bit of my childhood. NF

[Dave Bailey]

Elwy Yost has died, here's the CBC report.

 

I grew up watching Passport to Adventure after school during the sixties, he would play an old movie in five parts during the week, and talk about what we had seen after each show. He was like a friendly uncle, and he will be missed.

[mercman]

Dang....You just brought back a ton of memories for me too. Havent heard that name in a very long time, but just saying it transports me back.

 

RIP Elwy

[johnnyb]

I remember watching.....Saturday night at the movies? Something like that....would have been in the 80's....and you're right....gave off that vibe that made you want to listen to him

[ketchenany]

Elwy Yost has died, here's the CBC report.

 

I grew up watching Passport to Adventure after school during the sixties, he would play an old movie in five parts during the week, and talk about what we had seen after each show. He was like a friendly uncle, and he will be missed.

 

 

He will be missed. His tone of voice kept you glued to the screen.

[kickingfrog]

Obituary from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/deaths/elwy-yost-helped-movies-come-to-life-on-saturday-nights/article2107361/

 

 

Elwy Yost helped movies come to life on Saturday nights

ANDREW RYAN

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jul. 22, 2011 9:36PM EDT

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Increase text size The passing of Elwy Yost, who introduced countless viewers to the joys of cinema on his long-running TV series Saturday Night at the Movies, fades to black a momentous chapter in Canadian television.

 

Yost died Thursday at his home in Vancouver, surrounded by his wife of 60 years and his sons, according to a release sent out by the family. He was 86 years old.

 

“While we suspect he may have liked to have gone out with a blaze of glory in a Wild West gunfight, he in fact died peacefully of natural causes,” said the statement.

 

Although Yost sampled several vocations and wrote several books in his lifetime, he is best remembered for his unbridled passion for the movies, which he shared with viewers on the CBC program Passport to Adventure (1965-1967) and, more famously, on the TVO series Saturday Night at the Movies (1974-1999).

 

Born in 1925 in the then Toronto suburb of Weston, he was the only child of pickle manufacturer Elwy Honderich Yost and Annie Josephine Yost.

 

Like many who grew up during the Great Depression, Elwy the younger found creative escape in the city’s newly-constructed movie theatres. “His father gave him a dime each week to go to the movies, with the stipulation that Elwy come home and tell them the story,” related the family statement.

 

Following high school, Yost was accepted into the University of Toronto’s engineering program, but failed his first-year exams. He enlisted in the Canadian army in 1944 and was two weeks away from being shipped overseas to Europe when the war ended.

 

Yost returned to University of Toronto and changed his major to sociology. While there, he also collaborated with his friend Harold Smith on the short film In Between, one of the first independent movies produced in Canada.

 

Following graduation, Yost tried out a variety of jobs, among them construction worker and floor detective at the Canadian National Exhibition. He also tried his hand as an actor in summer-stock theatre productions.

 

While working at the circulation department at the Toronto Star, Yost met his future wife, Lila Melby, who had recently relocated to Toronto from Vancouver.

 

On their first date, he took Lila to see a musical he believed she would enjoy. When she told him she preferred films like The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Yost was instantly smitten. The couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last month.

 

Yost also worked in industrial relations at Avro Aircraft Ltd. until the cancellation of the Arrow airplane project in 1959. He taught high school English at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate in Etobicoke and became a panelist on the CBC programs Live a Borrowed Life, Flashback and The Superior Sex.

 

In 1965, Yost co-created and hosted CBC’s afternoon movie program Passport to Adventure, on which he introduced viewers to Hollywood swashbucklers. Around the same time, he was instrumental in helping the Metropolitan Educational Television Authority (META) get off the ground.

 

By 1974, Yost was working to establish regional councils for the publicly-funded broadcaster OECA, which later became TVO. One day, general manager Jim Hanley revealed that OECA had obtained the rights to air three Ingmar Bergman films and asked Yost if he had any ideas on how to air them on educational television.

 

On Yost’s suggestion, the Bergman films aired under a theme banner – Three Films in Search of God – with the inveterate film fan serving as knowledgeable host. The concept quickly evolved into Saturday Night at the Movies and the rest of the story, as they say in the movies, is history.

 

Saturday Night at the Movies became a weekly habit for many viewers during Yost’s quarter-century of hosting the program. He hand-picked the films screened weekly and willingly shared his infectious enthusiasm for movies with viewers.

 

“He was a man who simply loved movies,” said Bruce Pittman, who was producer and director on Saturday Night at the Movies in the early years. “It was like you were sitting down with your favourite uncle to watch a movie each Saturday night. People would make an evening out of it and many called it, ‘The Elwy Show’.”

 

At its rating peak in the late seventies, TVO’s Saturday Night at the Movies was regularly pulling more than a half-million viewers in the Southern Ontario market. The only program with more viewers was CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, which aired nationally.

 

“I know some of the other Canadian networks were a bit worried by our huge audience at the time,” said Pittman. “It was nice to know we were ruffling some feathers.”

 

The old movies were a draw, but viewers came coming back to Saturday Night at the Movies to spend time with Elwy Yost.

 

The show’s format unaltered throughout Yost’s tenure as host. Two films would air commercial-free each Saturday night, separated by pretaped interviews that Yost had conducted with Greer Garson, Frank Capra, Charlton Heston and other Hollywood legends.

 

“Elwy was a superb interviewer,” recalled Pittman, who accompanied Yost to Hollywood to film the interviews. “He knew the questions that would draw them out and he let them do the talking. All these film greats were delighted to talk to him.”

 

While at TVO, Yost was also the informative host of Magic Shadows, which split a classic movie into five weekday chapters, and the programs Rough Cuts, Talking Film and The Moviemakers.

 

But even the best movies eventually come to a close. Yost went into semi-retirement in 1989, but continued to host Saturday Night at the Movies for another decade. He retired for good in 1999 and that same year was awarded the Order of Canada. Over the years, he published four books, including Magic Moments from the Movies and White Shadows.

 

Yost is survived by his wife Lila, sons Christopher and Graham, daughter-in-law Connie and his grandchildren Clementine and Jack.

 

Yost’s son Graham is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who penned the scripts for the films Speed, Broken Arrow and Hard Rain. On his final broadcast of Saturday Night at the Movies, Yost beamed with pride as he introduced Speed with Graham on the show as his guest.

 

“It felt right,” said Pittman. “Elwy was very supportive of his son’s film career and Graham always said that his love of movies came directly from his father. It was a pretty emotional moment.”