The Moving picture world (August 1921)

August 6, 1921 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 607 Selling the Picture to the&Public one hundredth part as much. With the poor press work the Pittsburgh papers offer, it is the last place in the world to try and get re- sults with fine line lettering, and yet three or four of the houses stick to this awful stuff as though their hopes of Heaven depended on its use. We do not believe that it will ever land them in Heaven. —P. T. A.- Made Mothers Guests of "Mother o' Mine " Here is the advertisement recently spoken of in this department in connection with "Mother o' Mine" at the Fort Armstrong Theatre, Rock Island, 111. The management made all mothers over fifty the guests of the of mere'-- one. Space is costly in Boston and there are several papers to be used, so this amounts to more advertising than would be FORT ARMSTRONG Four Smashing Sensational Days Starting NOW!! THOMAS H.INCE „. , presents I i(J9 drama of To-day MOTHER O' MINE' NobblecastfealunixjUoud Hughes BeBij BlyDie, Joseph Kilgour' Claire It Dowel!. Belly RossClaik wvwww.wtf p~->«j- w.„„. g5J THE ROCK ISLAND INVITATION house, and printed in the lower right hand corner a coupon which gave admission, adding that the house would pay the war tax. In these days a lot of mothers of fifty look younger than their daughters and will not admit their ages, even for a pass, but the idea is a good one for general appeal, and is a graceful courtesy. The general layout of the display is good, though we do not like the hand lettered cast. It would have been better in type with the names separated as With a notable cast featuring Betty Blythe Lloyd Hughes Joseph Kilgour Claire McDowell . Betty Ross Clark This, in type, would have given a better dis- play and with the names segregated they could be picked up at the first glance instead of requiring the reader to puzzle them out It would also have permitted the pulling down of the title, which would have made this seem- ingly larger in the same sized lettering. Out- side of that, this is a capital use of a four tens —P. T. A.— Hooked Up "Passion" with "Gypsy Blood" Gordon's Olympia and Old South theatres Boston recently doubled on the engagement of Fola Negri m "Gypsy Blood" and doubled the space that either would have taken for a single attraction. Most of the sale was made on the success of "Passion," which is, of course, the big talking point for this version of "Carmen' but the Gordon houses do it more thoroughly than the rest with six direct allusions instead ThM Girt with Th. Gypsy Blood The Same Si - VAUDEVILLE - PHOTOPLAYS ' GORDON SELLS "GYPSY BLOOD" represented by a full page in many of the smaller cities with lower rates and fewer papers to be used. The advertisement is not exactlv a model of form, but it is sound work, fairly open, and not spoiled with a heavy half tone where line gives a better result. Boston does not do very well with half tones and pen .vork is much to be preferred in such a case. —P. T. A.— Snappy, Chatty Ads Save Large Display You can take large advertising spaces in which to put over your picture, or you can use brains instead of inches. Homer E. Ellison, of the Rialto and Princess theatres, Denver,' uses his brains. He takes the same space for each house and uses the same standard design, only the signature being different, one for each house. They are only 40 lines double column, but they are always the same, and the reader soon learns to pick up the ads out of a page because he knows just what to look for. There are two extremes to the change of space idea. One is to make each ad different, and the other J£ to make them always precisely the same. The former works best where larger spaces are taken and where the amount of space taken varies with the importance and estimated pull of the picture, but where about the same amount of space is used each week and this is not very large, it is better to stick to a single design used day in and day out, and trust to the clever- // These Pages Help You Why Not Send for a Copy of PICTURE THEATRE ADVERTISING Which gives you the foundation information about type, inks, paper, laying out, press work and all of the little points you need to know. It costs only $2 the copy, postpaid, and any one of a hundred and more ideas will be worth the initial cost of the book. Order today from the nearest address Mov- ing Picture World, 516 Fifth avenue, New York City; Garrick Building, Chicago, III., or Wright & Callender Building, Los Angeles, Cal. ness of the text to do the real selling. That circle in the left hand corner is the best thing about the design. It enables Mr. Ellison to isolate his chief appeal. Take that " 'Fatty' get stuck in the mud" in the Rialto space, for ex- ample. You know that Arbuckle is a heavy- weight. You can picture him in a mudpuddle. You are more than half sold before you start to read the text which starts: "A fat man selling lacy lingerie!" That gives you another mental picture that suggests well developed en- tertainment. Then you are told to see HOW he does it, and the sale is made. It is all done in four lines and the circle, with a bill for only eighty lines of space. Another circle urges Also JOHNNY HIKES in His Latest "TOUCH 'Jj I OMKnY. ami a Scenic of Hudson's Han THE ELLISON IDEA you to "See Dorothy Dalton Dance" and that should appeal to you, if you know Miss Dalton's work. The copy is changed every day, and we think it is read regularly, for most of the lines are interesting. There are only three or four lines to each appeal, but the essence of the whole plan book is boiled down to fit. Mr. Ellison docs not merely write something. He spends time to get the very best approach, and we rather fancy that it takes him longer to write one of these than it would to turn out a half page display. He has to boil and condense until the few words mean a whole five-reel play, and he has to do it two or three days for each picture. It's work, and the hardest kind of work, but it pays, not alone in the money he saves on the smaller space, but in the brevity and directness of the appeal. Don't despise the small space just because it is small. No man throws away a diamond because it is not as large as a cobble. He polishes it until it becomes worth many thousand times the value of the paving block, and the polishing costs more than the stone itself. —P. T. A.— This Prescription Reads Like One One of the best prescription advertisements we have seen to date comes in from the Kozy Theatre, Dresden, Tenn. It is on the regular blanks of a local drug concern and is type- written in red ink. In the space for the patient's name and addresses are "Wally Reid" and the title. The date is Tuesday and the registration number 12, the day of the month, while it is signed by Bebe Daniels, whose address is given as the Kozy Theatre. The prescription reads. R Tincture of Scandal 4 parts Essence of Romance 2 parts Spirits of Youth 3 parts Dissolve with two quack doctors and a jealous wife, the forest of Arden, a rainstorm and a roadhouse; a detective, a saxaphone and a beau- tiful nurse, before, during and between meals. Bottle it all up and shake well with laughter. It's a little late for "Sick Abed" on the big time, but the same style can be followed for other pictures, and it is a better scheme than merely the advice to take a dose of the play being promoted.