Ballyhoo (Feb 10, 1956)

Page scan 0001 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Feb 10, 1956
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Feb 10, 1956) National
Leaf #:
0001
Language:
English
Collection:
Canada, Global Cinema, and Hollywood Studio System
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library, Greig Dymond in memory of David Dymond, Paul Moore and Jessica Whitehead
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:

Ballyhoo

  • Ontario 'B' District Ballyhoo, editor: Dan Krendel (1952-55)
  • Profit Blitz for ‘Fitz’, editor: Dan Krendel (1955)
  • National Ballyhoo, editor: Dan Krendel (1956-57)
  • Time Out for Ticket Talk, editor: Norman Barker (1960-61)

Ballyhoo (1952-61) was published by Famous Players Canadian Corporation as a mimeographed internal sales and theatre managers’ newsletter. Editor, Dan Krendel, had been division manager of the Ontario ‘B’ District since 1942, and initially created Ballyhoo in 1952 to circulate weekly updates for a regional sales contest. Ontario ‘B’ District Ballyhoo continued until 1955 as a tool for sharing and incentivizing new sales techniques and publicity methods as the movie business declined in the face of television and the baby boom.

In Fall 1955, Profit Blitz for ‘Fitz’ was a nationwide sales contest, named for Famous Players’ president J. J. Fitzgibbons, honouring his 25th year as head of the business. Dan Krendel was made National Drive Captain and edited a weekly newsletter for the campaign.

From 1956 until at least 1957, National Ballyhoo was published weekly with Krendel as editor. He continued the style and content developed earlier for his Ontario ‘B’ District, but now extended vastly for a chain-wide coast to coast scale. Ballyhoo’s sharing promotional tools came at a time of contracting box office as television and automobile ownership became prevalent in the mid-1950s.

By 1960 until at least 1961, Time Out for Ticket Talk continued as a mimeographed newsletter, edited by Norman Barker of the head office publicity department. Time Out was compiled on a less ambitious scale than Ballyhoo. Compared to the earlier national compilation of local publicity gimmicks, Time Out often contained only a single memo or reproduced local story, and was often undated and only informally edited.

– Paul Moore, March 2024

Date Added:
April 11, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR VEEP "Ever since the conclusion of our recent, very successful PROFIT BLITZ FOR FITZ, we have had requests from District Managers, Managers and Partners, that the bulletins which were such an important part of our drive be continued in some form or other, The bulletins seem to have struck a responsive chord in the hearts and minds of every one of our men. They served to bring the managers in far distant points closer together .., They seem to have created a closeness, a kinship, a unity of purpose, They have jumped the barriers of districts and of divisions. There isn't a doubt in our mind that if they didn't accomplish any other purpose, they did serve to cement the family ties of our great big happy FAMOUS family of men and women the country over," "So ... we held a meeting. In fact we held several meetings, and decided that the famous BLITZ bulletin would continue. The format will be a little different, but in essence the make-up will be similar to that you had become accustomed to during the drive." "Dan Krendel has agreed to publish the bulletin once every two weeks, Its prime purpose will be to disseminate information and to exchange ideas that may be of help to each of our operations, wherever they may be, It is YOUR bulletin; it will be up to you to keep it alive, ‘Send your ideas, suggestions, selling campaigns directly to Dan, as you did during our Blitz. He will sift them and present the better ones to the same committee which served during our drive, There may even be prizes for you from time to time ... for those managers, that is, who do an outstanding selling job, or for those employees, including managers, who contribute ideas that are helpful to our operations, You have already received some information from Dan; more details will be found in these pages," "No one of us is a genius ... but I recall one interpretation of the term, as published in an earlier bulletin ... "Genius is the power of making a continuous effort." That's all we expect of anybody ... a continuous effort. We're into a new year now. No one can part the curtains of time to peek into the future ... we can, however help shape that future, for ourselves, our families and our company, by exerting a continuous effort every day, every week, every month. With that on our side we can't help but finish the year away ahead of the game," "Good luck with the new bulletin, It's your show entirely ... make it a good one, and in keeping with the high standard of Showmanship that FAMOUS PLAYERS has always stood for," R. W. Bolstad