The box office check-up of 1935 (1936)

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SOLD -AND THEN THEY HAD TO BE Revealing the secret of showmanship as employed in selling 1935 product by A-MIKE VOGEL SOME months back to the Managers' Round Table Club, came a confession from a puzzled theatre man. He was ashamed of his grosses on pictures he had really tried to put oyer. Despite his efforts the box office showed little life. "Would ask you," he wrote, "to tell me and no doubt many more like me just what real showmanship is and how to use same. We read a lot in your paper about showmanship, but just what and how to do it is what puzzles me." The newer dictionaries have not as yet got around to defining accurately and satisfactorily this much discussed term, born into the motion picture industry but some 15 years ago and waxing vigorous and important only in the last decade. In lieu of this wanted definition, the word showmanship may safely be used as a synonym for profitable showbusiness. It may also be a talent outside the conventional advertising ch annels applied by showmen who possess it to make the public feel that ticket-buying urge — a certain instinct enabling one theatre man to sense a good selling angle that his brother manager may have missed. And this sense of showmanship may deal with any phase of theatre operation. Just what is this showmanship may perhaps be best indicated by describing in brief unusual advertisings and exploitations reported by showmen in various parts of the world and published in the Managers' Round Table Club of Motion Picture Herald during 1935. For instance, one might recall the agileminded thinking of those showmen who at the turn of the year had booked for preholiday showings various period pictures released at that time and utilized such bookings to tie in with local holiday chariti es sponsored by leading newspapers. To mind comes various "Barbary Coast" balls put on in different cities with proceeds going to charities. Guests came in costume represented by the picture, the newspapers concerned plugged the attrac tion and theatre, respectable sums were realized. In Memphis, the Warner Theatres zone chief, Howard Waugh, and Manager Bill Hendricks of the Warner theatre organized "Sweet Adeline," a charity ball to aid a Christmas fund, gave prizes for the most novel costumes and for best quartet singing of the song in the picture. Many theatre men put on annual Thanksgiving and Christmas food and toy matinees wherein children who bring a can of foodstuffs or a toy for the underprivileged are admitted free to special performances. In most instances the theatres are content with the added prestige brought by these co-operations, but Manager Gus Lampe of the Eckel theatre in Syracuse, hooked his toy matinee to a then current Temple picture by forming a Temple Toy Club. Children bringing a toy to the theatre were given membership cards, which in addition to allowing them free admission, also were presented for a photo of the star. Showmanship of a high calibre was shown, too, by Manager Larry Lehman and Louis Mayer, advertising chief, at the Mainstreet, Kansas City, upon the inauguration of a vaudeville policy. A vigorous but conventional advertising drive might have done the trick, but these theatre men promoted the Chamber of Commerce, American Legion posts, Boy Scouts and other organizations to insure a profitable welcome for this new presentation. Merchants used special stickers on letters and packages, slugs were supplied for inclusion in store ads, streets were decorated, parades organized, strong newspaper co-operation secured and endorsements obtained from prominent citizens. To attract the art-minded intelligentsia to the New York showing of "Don Juan," a prominent gallery was promoted to show etchings from the drawings of the picture's sets. Roscoe Drissell exhibited "Naughty Marietta" posters in the Wilmington, Del., Art Show, and in London John Armstrong, Paramount, dug up an "itometer" to measure the appeal of British girls who answered an ad to serve as Mae West doubles on "Belle of the Nineties." No, showmanship does not flourish only under certain conditions, nor is it indigenous to particular parts of the world. London offers the same opportunities as Kansas City and Memphis. Showmen who can sense the ticket-selling angle belong to the world, for even in Shanghai, A. L. Caplan, at the King's theatre, found that the youngsters would go for a coloring contest on a Temple picture as enthusiastically as those on this side. Quick-thinking, of course, is still another definition of showmanship and applies for instance to Manager George Jones at Loew’s theatre in Richmond, Va., on the occasion of his date on "Painted Veil." Jones discovered the picture to be the star's nineteenth, and immediately announced a "Garbo 19th Party." Every stunt revolved around that number, including an invitation to 19 local children who had never seen a motion picture. The papers made much of it. Will stenographers get out of bed before breakfast to see a picture? In Washington, showmanship did what alarm clocks often fail to do when Loew Division Manager Carter Barron, and ad chief Lou Brown, arranged a showing of "After Office Hours." The trick was in serving coffee and doughnuts after the screening held at 7 o'clock, and the novelty of the gag put it over successfully. Quick thinking, indeed, and also deep. Nothing escapes the eager, if not the eagle eye of the showman in looking about for the unusual tieup. Even animals from the? zoo are fair game — at least so considered Manager Francis Deering of Loew's State, Memphis, who wangled a loan of the city's pet elephant for a street bally on "Clive of India," to tie in with the elephant sequences in the picture. And Louis Charninsky, at the Capitol in Dallas, Tex., awoke curiosity by advertising for a span of oxen as part of a stunt on "West of the Pecos," as did Bill Hendricks, whose advertised nudist colony in his lobby [TURN TO PAGE 149] 108 THE BOX OFFICE CHECK-UP OF 1935