Renowned film critic got start at Free Press

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This article was published 22/01/2019 (2833 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Leonard (Len) Klady, a former film writer for the Winnipeg Free Press, founding member of the Winnipeg Film Group (WFG) and pre-eminent entertainment industry journalist, has died at the age of 67 in Los Angeles. He was diagnosed with cancer in November, according to his wife, Beverly Walker.

The Winnipeg-born Klady spent the last few decades headquartered in Los Angeles, where he wrote for Variety, Screen International and Movie City News. Educated at the University of Manitoba, Klady caused ripples in the local film scene even before the Winnipeg Film Group was created in 1974.

“I met him when I was a teenager,” said Greg Klymkiw, current executive director of the WFG. “He used to program this amazing film series in the auditorium of the Manitoba Museum. I went to every single film he ran there and one day, he just said: ‘You’re coming to every movie. Do you want to take tickets for me and I’ll let you in for free?’”

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship for Klady and Klymkiw — bonding over their mutual passion for cinema and cigarettes.

“In those days when you could smoke anywhere, I probably spent more time sitting outside the cinema with Len smoking cigarettes and listening to him regale me with all kinds of tales of old Hollywood and new Hollywood,” Klymkiw recalled. “He was a walking encyclopedia.”

“From a very young age, he kept file cards on every film he ever saw,” said Gene Walz, a film professor at the University of Manitoba and an early member of the WFG. “He was just a movie nut, and a movie star follower, even before he went to Hollywood.

“He made sure he knew everything he could about movies.”

As a reviewer for the Free Press, “he had the perfect movie mentality to be a newspaper movie critic,” Walz said. “He wasn’t too highbrow and he wasn’t too lowbrow.

Walz said Klady hosted a symposium at the University of Manitoba that inspired the birth of the film co-op that would become the Winnipeg Film Group.

“(The WFG) was something that was really near and dear to his heart and he spoke about it passionately over the years,” Klymkiw said. “This organization is largely here because of his commitment, his passion and his efforts.”

“You need food to survive and movies, for Len, were like food,” Klymkiw said. “They nourished him and filled his soul.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing