Exhibitors Herald (1927)

36 EXHIBITORS HERALD March 26, 1927 , THE THEATRE {^Q^^JJ)epartmtnt of Practical Showmanship “Kiddie Klub” Sells Tickets If You Haven’t One Start It This Week If you haven’t started the “Kiddie Klub’’ your theatre needs, better start it this ■week. Needn’t call it that, of course, for it’s doing well under other names, but the basic idea is the thing and it’s a thing that sells a lot of tickets and stabilizes patronage. Chicago’s outstanding example of the Kiddie Klub idea is to be observed at the height of its power in the first Sunday matinee each week at the Granada theatre. This one is called the “Cute Club,’’ and Benny Meroff, stagehand leader, is the featured personality. It operates like this: Meroff has a line he uses after stage numbers which goes, “Cute, eh?’’ On the basis of this, the Cute Club was organized to include as members the little tots in the community who have talent of one kind or another, although children professing no talent are quite as welcome and in fact comprise the majority of the membership. At this first matinee each Sunday Meroff brings on eight or ten of the Cute Club members who have requested a chance to do their stuff on the stage and they do it. After this performance, children wishing to join the club are lined up in the lobby, registered as members, given membership cards and lapel pins, meet Meroff and become weekly regulars sure as Saturday night and Sunday School. Does it pay? The theatre, which seats 4,000, is packed for this early Sunday show each week. It is packed with children and their parents, relatives, friends. The line in the lobby after the performance, made up of children wishing to join the club, looks like about 200. Figure up 200 a week for innumerable weeks, multiply by the number of persons in an average family, estimate the number of additional theatre visits such a mob of regulars will be responsible for, and you’ll have an idea of the prestige and profits due this feature of the Granada. Meroff (or the management) may or may not have read the article in this department some months ago pertaining to the Children’s Piano Playing Contest conducted by the Chicago Herald and Examiner, but he does the things suggested therein. He gives the child contestants a chance to play on the stage, as suggested, and the management has added to the suggestion made the very much worthwhile idea of offering special prizes for winners in the contest. So much for the Granada. Announcement at hand states that the Piccadilly, Chicago, has arranged with Bet you can’t guess what this picture is. Pay me; you lose. It’s a shadow box built in the lobby of the Strand theatre at Fairmont, Minnesota, to advertise “The First Year.’’ I don’t know who made the picture but it was probably a picturization on an Elinor Glyn story. These shadow boxes cover one side of the lobby and are the most attractive advertising that could possibly be used. Mr. Hay Nicholas directs the policies of the Strand and the theatre has long since passed the successful mark. — /. C. JENKINS. the newspaper mentioned to offer special prizes also, in connection with which it has formed the A1 Short Piccadilly Musical Club, A1 Short being the Benny Meroff of that place, or perhaps the reverse is more accurate. At any rate, the same general plan is to be followed and without doubt the same results will be obtained. But the newspaper hookup is not essential to the success of the plan. For that matter, any town which hasn’t a newspaper live enough to enter into a tieup of this kind simply hasn’t a newspaper. The affair can be managed very well, however, with only the community angle. What it does to the box office is the important thing, of course. It increases business, getting the whole