The Exhibitor (1959)

EX 142 MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR July 15, 1959 Over 100 entries were received, with the winner, Nurse Hughes, of the Park Hospital, Davyhulme, Urmston. being presented with her prizes from our stage by G. T. Urwin, J. P. It so happened that she won on an entry submitted by a patient in Male Ward 10 at the hospital, who wrote a poem in praise of her. The contest proved considerable of a good¬ will builder, aroused a bit of civic pride, and worked out advantageously to all con¬ cerned. It cost the theatre nothing, save a bit of hard promotional work in rounding up the prizes, etc. The contest was run in conjunction with the Eccles Cooperative Society. G | STUNTS-BAILY Number 60 Some Drive-in Business Builders THEATRE: Gulf Drive-In, ADDRESS: Corpus Christi, Texas MANAGER: Ed Farmer The following is a resume of some pro¬ motions and stunts pulled recently at our drive-in. They all helped us and may help others. We obtained blanks for the Animal Fair Coloring Contest from the National Popcorn Institute at a very small cost. We received about 500 entries and the deal helped sell popcorn and also got publicity on our cur¬ rent attraction. The winner was host to his teacher and his class of 30 children of the first grade. For Mothers’ Day we promoted a trading stamp company to give stamps to the first 200 mothers to enter the drive-in. The stamps were sealed in envelopes and each envelope contained from 10 to 1000 stamps. We also promoted prizes for the oldest, youngest and the mother with the most children. We re¬ ceived a news story when a mother with 16 THE NEW 1959 “Showman-of-the -Year” CONTEST Bach individual achievement, selected by the Editorial Board and published in this every-second-week EXPLOITATION Sec¬ tion of MOTION PICTURE EXHIBI¬ TOR, will receive an Achievement Cita¬ tion. Five by the same showman published in any one year will receive a SILVER Achievement Citation. And, should any showman ever accomplish ten in the same year, a OOLD Achievement Citation will be awarded. No weekly or monthly prizes will accompany such citations. At each year’s end, all such published achievements will be submitted to the “COMMITTEE OF 100” theatre circuit executives for their individual study and their personal choice of the BEST FIVE. A minimum of $100000 IN PRIZES will be awarded to the five “SHOWMENOF-THE-YEAR so selected. Alert show¬ men, interested in the international dis¬ tinction to be gained from such awards, will recognize that an advantage lies in winning repeated individual published achievements. Address all submissions and photographs to: GEORGE F. NONAMAKER, Feature Editor, MOTION PIC¬ TURE EXHIBITOR, 246-48 N. Clarion Street, Philadelphia 7, Penna. •i _ _ This live float for Paramount's "The Five Pennies" attracted much attention during its tour of greater New York to plug the picture before and during its engagement at the Capitol, New York City. children and her daughter, 16 years of age, received two of the prizes. For Fathers’ Day we had an essay contest going on “My Pop Is Tops.” A local depart¬ ment store furnished $100 worth of men’s wear for first prize. Each child entering re¬ ceived a Fathers’ Day card which admitted father free on his day. A midget racer give-away is the hottest thing of its type I’ve seen in years. The adults as well as the kids are interested. We sold advertising to six merchants on a trailer to pay all cost. It will be given away at a specified show and the winner must be pres¬ ent to win. The merchants give the tickets to the parents and the kids deposit them at the drive-in. A rock ‘n’ roll stage show with four acts putting on an hour show from the top of the projection booth paid good dividends. We had booked it for a Friday night only, but it created so much interest that we held it over Saturday night and played to an even larger crowd. The talent was paid on a per¬ centage basis after expense. The two ’teen¬ age features were flat. We have also met success with the giving out of coupons on the order of “Super Mar¬ ket leaders.” These call for two bags of pop¬ corn for nine cents; two bar-b-q sandwiches for 49 cents; two sno-cones for nine cents; two hot dogs for 29 cents; etc. We give them out on slow nights to get people out of their cars into the snack bar. They are especially effective just before pay day. We also give out dated guest tickets good for admission of driver only in a tieup with various local dealers such as a bakery and the Coca Cola bottling agency. We are, in turn, reimbursed at a discounted admission price by these dealers in return for the ad¬ vertising obtained on these “guest tickets.” We also get in on their radio programs in return for a few passes. Number 61 Selling an Opera Film THEATRE: Astor, ADDRESS: Brooklyn, N. Y. MANAGER: Norman Wilks To exploit fully the engagement of Puccini’s opera “Tosca” we realized that we had to reach the limited number of groups who would be most likely to appreciate a film of this artistic type. We in the industry know that there are not enough so-called “long hairs,” unfortu¬ nately, to depend on routine advertising, so the following was done to attract the opera lovers and those who would appreciate a production of this order: All borough high schools and colleges were contacted in person, not by mail. The heads of the music departments were given per¬ sonal invitations to review the film, and thousands of special student discount tickets were distributed by the music teachers to the music students. Thirty-five Italian-American societies were contacted, first by mail, and then by tele¬ phone. Personal invitations were issued to the heads of these organizations, which re 1 suited in several free write-ups in their group publications plugging the film. To plug the picture, attractive full-color display boards were used in the lobby three weeks in advance of play-date, in addition to running the trailer two weeks in advance. ’ All local PTA groups were contacted and this resulted in large group attendance. Special counter cards were put in music stores two weeks in advance to catch the at • tention of music lovers. Attractive newspaper ads were used aimed at music lovers, with particular attention paid to the Italian language papers. All of these things helped considerably to put over the film. I, I INSTITUTIONAL Number 52 Celebrating a Tenth Anniversary THEATRE: Qdcon-Humber, ADDRESS: Toronto, Canada MANAGER: John Heathcote The celebration of an event of this nature • naturally required quite a bit of advance planning. Our move number one was to ensure that a personality would be here, and who better than the Mayor? He accepted our invitation; . but, later, had to decline because of unfore seen events. However, he deputized controller Mrs. Jean Newman to appear in his stead. She appeared on our stage and presented 10 year service pins to our husband and wife team, ; Mr. and Mrs. Willey, respectively projectionist and cashier. It is usual for a theatre having a birthday to have a birthday cake in the lobby. I think we went one better here in that we obtained a tie-in with Ogilvie Flour Mills and were given 150 Ogilvie New Real Cake Mix Twin Packs to give to the first 150 ladies here on birthday night. The promotion boards read, “It’s our birthday but you bake the cake.” The cake mix was displayed in th£ lobby and to complete the picture we had a cut-out of a birthday cake inscribed “Our Tenth Anni¬ versary.” Bunting was strung along the marquee to give a festive air and all publicity for the current attraction was marked our 10th anni¬ versary show. We also had a 10th anniversary stage show. This was billed as “Our birthday but you get the gifts.” It was in the nature of a crazy give-away and was handled by ad-publicist Ron Leonard. We promoted many prizes in¬ cluding L.P. records, boxes of chocolates, Pyrex oven ware, a Coca Cola picnic unit, a wicker arm chair, vouchers for dry clean¬ ing, etc. Other “crazy” prizes were a live chicken, a step-ladder, a wash tub, a string of weiners, a load of corn-flakes, etc. Invitations were printed and the oppor¬ tunity taken to get to know local traders by taking along the invitations and personally inviting them to the anniversary show. This has done inmeasurable good to the theatre j especially in relation to future promotions. We tidied up a bit; did some extra house¬ cleaning and had the staff’s uniforms all spic and span. The movie columnists came through with some extra publicity in the newspapers. The children were not forgotten in the 10th anniversary and as the Coca Cola sampling coincided this was used as a birthday gim¬ mick. On stage, a Coca Cola picnic unit was the prize in a game played by the children. All in all it was a most successful cele¬ bration — one that in a smaller town would have given us a very big press. Alas, in Toronto things like this pass unnoticed as far as the newspapers are concerned. How¬ ever, I consider that this sort of audience participation show and party does a enor¬ mous amount of good and is well worth the time and trouble it takes.