The Moving picture world (November 1921)

December 10, 1921 MOVING PICTURE WORLD 693 Selling the Picture to the&Public SKIPPER MEIGHAN SEEMS TO BE AT THE WRONG END But he was at the right end of the box-office report when Oscar White, of the Rex Theatre, Sumter, S. C, counted up, for a lot of people were sold on the unusual display and came to see Tom sail his freakish looking craft Invented a New Ship for "Cappy Ricks' Use When "Cappy Ricks" was announced at "the Rex Theatre, Sumter, S. C, manager Oscar White built a boat for the one-sheet cutout of Tom Meighan, building it of canvas over a wooden framework so that it would be light enough to suspend from the arch. It was painted a battleship grey and named the "Good Luck" because while he was superintending the hanging of the craft he heard a little girl bragging to her companion of her good luck in having her brother give her the price of a ticket see her favorite. White played the hunch and delayed the launching until he could name the craft. It worked, for he played over the average, and the people were pleased with the feature. The entire cost of materials, including the paint, was only six dollars and it did the feature a lot of good, for people came down to the theatre just to see the boat they had heard others talking about, and so long as they were there, and it looked interesting, they dug down for the coin and went in. You can see from the cut that White backed up the novelty with a good display of lithographs and stills and sold them while they admired his boat, even if he did have the helmsman at the wrong end of the boat for a craft of that rig. We think that Mr. White knows more about advertising than he does about boat building, but he got the coin, and that is the main point. , ward of $5,000 is offered." Teaser advertising carried along the idea. That worked capitally, but later in the week the same rider perambulated the streets with a second man across the saddle and now the blanket read "I have found my twin brother in "The Heart of the North" which plays the Strand theatre this week." Ten Thousand Boys in First National Parade Some day we are going to take the First National Publicity Department apart to see if we can find why it is they run so much to parades. They had parades for "Dinty" and "Peck's Bad Boy" and "The Kid" and a lot more, and just now they pulled a 10,000-boy parade in Chicinnati for "The Old Swimmin' Hole." First National has pulled more parades than are attached to any presidential campaign, but they always seem to clean up. The most recent was not exactly exploitation for the picture. The town has been having a Boys' Week, with the kids getting free dinners and lunches and more talk than they really wanted, and a big parade was to mark the final day. They wanted something to get the boys out. Mindful of 17,953 other parades, Roy H. Haines, First National exchange manager, went to the Keith people and offered to run off "The Old Swimmin' Hole" if the Keith interests would supply the house. The heads of the Boys' Week Committee liked the idea, but there was the question of space. The fire department agreed to let two boys sit in each of the 2,100 seats, and it looked as though that would suffice, and so "The Old Swimmin' Hole" was put on for one performance only. The teachers read the poem to the boys in class and the papers played it up with the result that something like 10,000 boys turned out and fully 6,000 of them managed to get into the theatre. It was indirect exploitation, for the picture had played out the town before that, but it helped both First National and the Keith house tag in on the big news story of the day, so it paid. Sequel to Exploit Put in Big Punch When "The Heart of the North" played the Strand, Atlanta, the management put a new kink into the street worker idea for this George H. Davis-Joe Brandt feature. The story deals with a mounted policeman and his outlaw twin brother, and Manager Schmidt put out a rider on a white horse in the uniform of the C. N. W. M. P. The saddle blanket carried a sign reading "I am looking for my twin brother for whom a re TEN THOUSAND BOYS MARCHED IN THIS TURNOUT And they were all headed for Keith's Theatre, Cincinnati, to see Charles Ray in "The Old Swimmin' Hole"; but even with two in a seat only about 6,000 of the boys got in to see the First National production at a special show