Moving Picture World (Nov-Dec 1923)

December 29, 1923 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 821 This French Doll Was a Real Peach Figuring that a French doll was about the best exploitation for a run of Mae Murray in The French Doll, George J. Schade hired a human mechanical doll to work in the window of a prominent store. He added a painting and a large card. The stuntster made appearances every hour from noon until four o’clock, and in the intervals she made frequent appearances in the ready-to-wear department in the store, helping business there materially. C. C. Deardouff, exploiteer for Metro, went out and got some good lingerie shops for stills showing Miss Murray and Schade fixed up a pretty lobby, with the result that business was exceedingly good. Alphabet Blocks Spelled the Sign Getting one of the largest windows in the Gimbel store in New York for Baby Peggy in her first full length picture was one of the stunts worked by Joe Weil, of Universal. Gimbel Brothers had already engineered a drive on the Baby Peggy dolls when they were first introduced. They made a good thing of it. When Weil learned that Peggy herself would be in town for a visit, he tied them up to a special drive on the dolls in connection with the personal appearance of the little star at the store. An entire window was used with a large picture of Peggy apparently projected by a machine at the opposite side, with a plentiful supply of stills and dolls and a few decorations to appeal to the child heart. A notable touch was the use of alphabet blocks tO' write the signs. These do not show in the cut, but are directly below the line of photographs. Such a window can be duplicated by any small store, and it will work as well for the little fellows as it did for the big concern. In the case of the Gimbel store, generous space was used in the store advertisements in the daily papers, running around 8 x 10 inches. The idea, of course, was that the Bagged Coin, Too Dulcy was put over in Sandusky by a characteristically Schade stunt. He had 3,000 bags made, about two by three inches, and printed “Come and see me spill the beans in Dulcy at the Schade Theatre. Constance Talmadge.” These were given out the week before the showing, mostly to the matinee patrons, and the bags were all over town. It was a clever idea and so people came to see Dulcy spill the beans and voted her a good little spiller. A Universal Release IF THIS PAYS IN NEW YORK SURELY YOUR STORE CAN COPY This is one of the main windows of the Gimbel store tied up to the Baby Peggy dolls and The Darling of New York. Show it to your local dealer and get him to put in a couple of dolls and a supply of stills and other accessory material. It will help him. Some time ago we showed a picture of Bluebeard’s first seven wives in silhouette. The same thing is now being done by suspending dolls in a shadow box with the statement that Gloria Swanson is Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. In the original the figures were full size, but the idea is less gruesome in miniature and can be worked where managers are afraid of the stronger effect. It is not as striking, but it is also less repellant. A Metro Release YOU’RE NOT TOO BIG TO PLAY WITH DOLLS LIKE THESE Francine Reed, a mechanical doll impersonator, made hourly appearances in the window of a Sandusky store when The French Doll was playing at Schade’s Theatre. It was not supposed to be an impersonation of Mae Murray, but just a French Doll. youngsters would come and bring their mothers, and a certain percentage of the latter would make purchases unrelated to the dolls. Chalk Stencils Generally stencils are worked on the sidewalk in water color, but P. F. Schwie, of the Garrick Theatre, Duluth, used chalk in his sidewalk work for Strangers of the Night. The design was the skull and bones and “S. of N.” and the design was spread all over the city two or three days before anything else was done. The design made as lot of talk but brought no definite conclusions until the same piratical crest was used in connection with newspaper and card advertisements. The cards literally flooded the town. Lipstick Stills on Flaming Youth Chicago was the first centre to get Flaming Youth, and one of the initial steps in an intensive campaign of general exploitation was to tie into the idea that Flaming Youth needs some cosmetics for kindling. Drug store windows were tied up to photographs of Colleen Moore applying the lipstick before going to her first party, and these (there are three sorts), motived a general display of scene stills to enliven the layout of beauty aids. This is going to be one of -the real heir to window grabbing, and if you are a F't Nationalist it might be well to start in to talk over the matter with your stores and beauty shops. Fix it in ad ^ and save time when the stills arrive. But cosmetic is only one of the angles. Dresses, lingerie, jazz phonograph records, books, candy, shoes and silk hosiery are all part of an appeal to flaming youth, and all should be approached. Taken in connection with the wide reading of the book, this picture will yield to splendid cooperative results and you can work with merchants who might not be willing to let in ordinary titles.