That year, as was customary, the Croisette was lined with deck chairs that could be rented per hour for a few francs (an elderly madame came around occasionally and gave you a paper slip when you paid her). Sitting there, you had a magnificent sweeping view of the Old Port with its outdoor restaurants and yachts and in the distance appeared the occasional ship, perhaps heading to nearby Nice. Lining the Croisette, opposite the luxury hotels, were fashionable beach restaurants shaded by colorful awnings that served Gallic delicacies, a few kiosks that sold newspapers and magazines, including the New York Herald Tribune and other foreign press, a string of palm trees, and large panels attached to the lampposts each of which promoted some new film that was in preparation or was being screened at the festival. 

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For Variety and other trade papers from England, Italy and France, this was one of the high points of the year. Some of these trade papers printed daily editions that were chock full of advertising announcing films and screening times at the film market as well as projects of films being prepared. It was the market, not the main competing festival and its ancillary sidebar sections, that were mostly the focus of the trade sheets on display in the posh hotels, suites rented by film sales companies, and lobbies. The new titles vied for attention in the press as well as on posters plastered in hotel lobbies and hotel façades and up and down the length of the Croisette. 20,000 journalists, photographers, film and television professionals crowded into the small Mediterranean city for the ten days the event lasted, with  films screened each day – the main, competing pictures in the Palais but also, from nine in the morning until midnight, in a half dozen commercial cinemas around the small city, many located on the Rue d’Antibes, the street that runs parallel to the Croisette, featuring commercial fare from around the world, mostly with English soundtracks, attended by buyers and distributers. The screenings might be packed tight with potential buyers when a film had been lavishly publicized, but at other times there would be only five or six in the seats.

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Variety had been founded in New York in 1905 by Sime Silverman, Syd’s grandfather. A year later, in 1906, a London office had been established and freelance correspondents in Paris and other European cities followed in the following decades, making Variety a truly international show biz trade paper, the only one of its kind covering vaudeville and live performances. The first ever recorded reviews of two short one-reel films appeared in the January 19, 1907 issue. In later decades, sections on radio and television were added, as these new media came into existence. Later, a short section on the legitimate theatre ran at the back of the paper, as well as night club reviews, a “chatter” catch-all column and – importantly – obits of those in the entertainment field.   

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This first trip to Latin American would be taken in November – December, before the Christmas holidays. January and February were the summer months in the southern hemisphere when many of those that needed to be contacted would be away, thus the issue would have to be published in late March, with a nominal deadline for advertising and editorial copy to be in  New York by March 1, 1976, which would give me time to put the final touches on the issue and update information I had culled during my swing through Latin lands. As a truly generous gesture, Syd agreed to let my wife, Lucy, accompany me on the trip, including her air fare. She would join me in Rio and remain with me as far as Lima. She could be a kind of secretary, phoning key companies from the hotels we were lodged in to set up appointments for me. 

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We landed in Rio on Sunday, November 2, and checked into the Leme Palace. The next morning I started calling some of the contacts on my list to make appointments. My knowledge of Portuguese was of the most rudimentary sort, but in the course of the week in Brazil I managed to get along in Spanish when my contacts did not know English. However, setting up appointments from the phone in our hotel room proved to be a major chore. One of the puzzlements was when I was given a phone number for a client and was told, for example,: um, sete dois, meia, sete, oito, um. I looked through my pocket dictionary but could find no number listed at “meia”. It took a while before I realized that in Brazil it was the word used for six, deriving from “media” or “half”.

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