Ballyhoo (Feb 24, 1956)

Page scan 0000 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Feb 24, 1956
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Feb 24, 1956) National
Leaf #:
0000
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.

— », $: = FAMOUS PLAYERS THEATRES: Se ro woes NATIONAL a K SERVE . 54 4 SHOWMANSHIP; VOR. 1 NO. 2 SEL AND prorit wi FEBRUARY 24, 1956 COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS 3 eo o -' = > COMPILED AND EDITED BY DAN KRENDEL Wy, (A, IF, + I have a note from Mr. Fitzgibbons, and he passes along this very pertinent bit of logic ... "A top executive when asked what he thought was the most important skill of a successful administrator, replied ... 'COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS! ... and in this respect, 'Communication! means not only 'Sounding off and being understood,! but also TAKING IN, digesting, and then putting into practice those ideas." And that makes me wonder ... what happens to all the tried and proven merchandising ideas which are regularly reported in the pages of our trade press? What happens to the prizewinning campaigns which are selected by panels of professional and critical specialists in the art of selling the product which keeps us in business? Are they skimmed over lightly and then promptly forgotten? Are they read at all? Are they simply lost in the shuffle of our daily routine? Week after week I read accounts of selling activities in every part of the world ... good, solid selling of theatre tickets, and that seems to be the end of it. Seldom if ever do I see one of our men pick up an idea .,. a pre-tested idea ... chew it over and then adapt it to his own needs. It seems such a waste, such a dissipation of brain power to let an idea die aborning. I have tried and tried to analyze this negative psychology, and just can't seem to come up with a satisfactory answer. Is there a hidden resistance to adding dignity and stature to the originator of the idea? Is there a fear of being criticized for copying someone else!s creative effort? Man, that's the foundation our business is built on ... profiting by one another's experience. Consistent and sustained salesmanship Soc Ole ERILIL “aly Showmanship if you will, and the manner in which it 43 applied, is the truest barometer of our worth to our company ... and, Let's face it ... to ourselves, ; Let's not be Prima Donnas ... let's start communicating our ideas ,,, to each other, through the medium of these pages. Let us absorb and put into practice the ideas and suggestions we read and hear about, Let us copy, if we must, the ideas developed by other showmen .,. but let us also develop new slants and new ideas of our own. That's Showmanship ... and the true measure of our success as representative Showmen, D.E.K. FAMOUS PLAYERS CANADIAN CORPORATION 1200 ROYAL BANK BLDG., TORONTO