Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1931)

:jM a y 9 , 19 3 1 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 65 tJonery Inaugurated ''Family Night" As A ^lug For ''Lincoln" The first "family night" at the Kingston Theatre, Kingston, Pa., was inaugurated recently by Mitchell Conery, manager of the house, to help put "Abraham Lincoln" across, -j The West Side Women's 1| Club of the city was appealed i|to and they in turn co-operated in making the first "family ■jnight" a real get-together. The ladies secured much advertising jtfor the theatre that would have been otherwise impossible to ;^et through other sources. I Announcement about the picture was made to the Women's *Club, in every school, to all Boy Scouts and all Camp Fire Girls. These announcements were all made possible through the aid <)f members of the Women's Club. With many members of the •Club in evidence on opening night of the picture, it gave the kheatre the real "Family Night" appearance. It will probably be repeated many times in the future. And :just to show you that Conery is still displaying the same activity !that he showed when down South, here's how lie got in a fine :plug on "Reducing" by means of a lobby display. Two dummy figures were borrowed from a dressmaking shop. '•One figure was stuffed to resemble a very fat woman and then being attired in women's clothes. The other figure was taken apart so that only a narrow rod stood up and this represented a thin woman. On the big fat figure was attached the head of Marie Dressier cut out from the one-sheet. On the slim figure was a cut-out head of Polly Moran. The head cut-outs were from the one-sheet and were drawn in a very funny cartoon manner. The figures were then placed facing each other and a lettered card placed between read, "Polly Moran laughs herself thin at Marie Dressier in 'Reducing'. You'll laugh, too. Here Wednesday and Thursday." An added novelty stunt was the placing of a pair of scales in the lobby. A card on the scales stated that a free admission would be given to all ladies weighing over 170 pounds. A few took advantage of weighing themselves and many just took notice. SMITH'S AD CAMPAIGN! Credit this beautiful ad campaign to Pete Smith, publicity impresario for M-G-M at Culver City and used to excellent returns for the coast premiere of "The Secret Six." The six smaller ads of white letters on black background started the campaign off with a great teaser plug. We leave it to your imagination as to the effectiveness of such teaser copy. After this preliminary start the balance of the ads followed, all tending to build up interest in the picture. Regardless of local handicaps any smart showman can build up a similar campaign for this attraction by following the idea created by Pete. If you cannot secure mats of these ads from your exchange, try dropping a line direct to Smith at the M-G-M Studios on the coast. If that fails, take the text and duplicate the stars as near as possible. In reproducing this layout the halftone failed to bring out some of the smaller type sharp enough to read. In some of the ads the use of an ordinary magnifying glass is suggested. Otherwise we will furnish the text not readable to those requesting same. We are trying to inject sufficient novelty into these various layouts of newspaper ads to make them really worth-while to showmen everywhere. You will note that some weeks we emphasize small town copy and at other times an assortment of all styles. Our purpose in handling ad reproductions in this manner is to give the widest variety possible in the space we allot for this kind of material. After showing so many of the regular ad layouts, this one ought to prove interesting to the followers of the Club pages. No one will deny that it is different as well as outstanding. We hope to be able to pass along some more of the novel ad campaigns from Pete Smith's workshop.