Boxoffice (Apr-Jun 1963)

• ADLINES & EXPLOITIPS • ALPHABETICAL INDEX • EXHIBITOR HAS HIS SAY • FEATURE RELEASE CHART • FEATURE REVIEW DIGEST • SHORTS RELEASE CHART §f • SHORT SUBJECT REVIEWS • REVIEWS OF FEATURES • SHOWMANDISING IDEAS THE GUIDE TO BETTER BOOKING AND BUSINESS-BUILDING Film History Museum Wins Patrons For Little Theatre Up Escalator Kids Wear Store Puts Up 15 'Castaways' Prizes A coloring contest put on by Arnold Kirsch, manager of the Melba Theatre in the Bronx, N.Y., for “In Search of the Castaways” brought a “lot of extra revenue” at a Saturday matinee. Kirsch relates he got together with a local children’s wear store for a giveaway of 15 attractive gifts to youngsters who turned in the best coloring jobs on a linedrawing of a scene from the film. The 15 prizes were awarded from the Melba stage at the Saturday matinee opening of the show. For the boys, there were colorful sports shirts, jackets and trousers, exchangeable for proper sizes if incorrect. For the girls were skirts, blouses, slips, etc. Two weeks in advance, Kirsch had made up a 40x60 poster advertising the show and the big coloring contest, with a list of the prizes and the sponsor’s name. Also made up were 6,000 heralds featuring the coloring mat, which were distributed at the neighborhood schools. Contest copy was used in the Melba’s weekly program. Announcements were made from the stage each Saturday and Sunday when the children were in the theatre, several weeks in advance. Besides the prizes, the children’s wear merchant also came up with a nice check to cover the advertising. The Saturday matinee when the prizes were awarded was jammed with children. Chelsea, England, Poll Gives Race to Russia A majority of the people around the Gaumont Theatre in Chelsea, England, believe that Russia will beat the U.S. in the race to land a man on the moon. J. R. Thompson, the Gaumont manager, found this out when he distributed leaflets asking, “Which in your opinion will be the first nation to land men on the moon?” Listed below were the U.S.A., Russia and Great Britain. The leaflet was part of Thompson’s campaign for his twin bill of “The Moon Pilot” and “The Prince and the Pauper.” The persons who picked Russia to be first gave as reasons that the Reds were first in space, their scientists are more dedicated and their dictator type of government is able to “specialize” more efficiently than the U.S .A. Laugh-Makers Draw Big “40 Pounds of Trouble,” in a long run at the Joy Theatre in New Orleans, was one of five laugh-makers enjoying patronage of all age groups at downtown theatres in the Crescent City. The Little Cinema in Toronto, Ont., is all its name implies. It’s a 16mm situation on the second floor of the downtown Arcade building, reached by escalator, and furthermore its 300 seats are divided in two auditoriums, one accommodating 133 persons and the other 167. It presents mostly foreign films, two showing at the same time. The manager is Allan W. Perkins, who won several Boxoffice Citations of Honor when he managed the Roxy in Midland and the Danforth in Toronto, among others. He forwards details of a recent “very successful patron-getter.” BARNEY SIMMON’S IDEA The promotion, a “Museum of Cinema History,” was the idea of Barney Simmons, Perkins’ boss. With the aid of Hye Bossin, Canadian tradepaper editor and official historian of the Canadian Picture Pioneers, and of the National Film Board, a government agency, an array of oldtime movies, one-sheets, cameras and equipment of yesteryear was assembled for display in a vacant storeroom next door to the Little Cinema. The “museum” featured a Mutoscope, a device on a stand that the viewer had to peer into while cranking the picture through. Only one person could see it at a time. The museum piece presents a dilly, “The Butler and the Lady.” There is no admission charge, but a charge of five cents is being made to see the Mutoscope film, and proceeds are being donated to the benevolent fund of the Canadian Picture Pioneers. CALL FOR FILM ANTIQUES The museum is open from noon to 10 p.m. There is a guest book, and it already contains hundreds of names. Bossin and Simmons have invited industry people and others who possess pictures or equipment from the early days of movies to lend them to the museum. There is a display of slides used in the early film houses to impart information to the audiences, laugh-provokers today, such as: Ladies Kindly Remove Your Hats. Please Read the Titles to Yourself. Loud Reading Annoys Your Neighbor. Ladies Without Escorts Are Cordially Invited. To go along with the Museum of Cinema The Little Cinema's Museum of Cinema History includes an oldtime projection machine, left, and a Mutoscope, a peep-show type of machine unreeling "moving” pictures when the crank is turned. It presents a dilly, "The Butler and the Lady," at a nickel a showing. History, Perkins and Simmons booked “Days of Thrills and Laughter,” a compilation of strips from hilarious silents of the old days. Patronage at both the museum and Little Cinema has been good. “Believe me, it has been enjoyable to hear the younger generation laughing so heartily at the same antics that we older people laughed at in our younger days,” Perkins comments. Mimeographed brochures prepared by Bossin are distributed to museum visitors to enable them to follow the slides. The brochure reveals that Thomas Edison, who invented the first practical motion picture machine, the Kinetoscope, a peep-show arrangement which he patented in 1887, was descended from John Edison, a great grandfather, who was a United Empire Loyalist who received a crown grant of 600 acres at what is now Vienna, Ont. The inventor’s father Samuel was born in Digby, N.S. 'Bye Bye Birdie' Show John Thompson, Columbia publicist, arranged with Bramson’s, fashionable women’s store, for a fashion show to tie in with the opening of “Bye Bye Birdie” in Chicago. All five Bramson stores are carrying window displays showing the clothes worn in the film, and they will host a screening for seniors from all the city’s north side high schools. The film will open in the Chicago Loop in June. BOXOFFICE Showmandiser : : April 1, 1963 — 49 — 1