Ballyhoo (Apr 20, 1956)

Page scan 00016 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Apr 20, 1956
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Apr 20, 1956) National
Leaf #:
00016
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
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PARAMOUNT HALIFAX The most recent in the very successful series of Childrens! Film Library shows was held by Freeman Skinner during Easter week ... In addition to his regular screen fare, and promoted amateur talent Freeman used a cute five year old youngster in bunny costume on his stage ... who by his antics and simple dance routines really stopped the show. Freeman doesn't sell ice cream on his confection bar ... but hustled around and promoted 1,000 bars from a local dairy, which he used as an inducement to the first thousand small fry purchasing tickets, Noticing CANADIAN LANCERS, a short featuring the Halifax Junior Bengal Lancers, booked for early showing, Freeman started the publicity ball rolling by getting his local editor to run an excellent story with a three column pic of the young lady about whom the pic is centered. Members of this junior riding club take turns spending a few hours daily at the theatre passing out Leaflets announcing the film, The executive of this organization have agreed to rent the theatre for a special Sunday performance, oXeXeXeXeo ORPHEUM SOO For her COGKLESHELL HERO date Olga contacted a local resident who had been a commando in the Royal Marines and was personally aguainted with the two English survivors, She arranged a terrific T.V. appearance on one of the popular local programs, with her theatre and pic reaping many benefits. Two groups of Sea Cadets were invited to see the show, and this received good coverage over both T.V. and radio, also a very tiny blurb in the Soo Star who are not overly generous with their space, The theatre front was well decorated with navy flags. oXeXoXoXe CAPITOL VERNON For his AFRICAN LION date Walter Bennett did a lot of foot slogging and wound up with one of the finest full page co-ops I have seen, Each merchant featured in his ad one of the animals shown in the pic, and the entire page was in the form of a colouring contest for the small fry, Winners were given guest tickets to the theatre, A large banner head informed the readers what it was all about, and naturally, the Capitol ad dominated the page. Incidentally, business was good, Two excellent lobby displays were also set up ... one an eighteen foot banner made up from figures snipped out of half a dozen six sheets, with a jungle background painted in. A very fine job of pre-selling and selling a difficult attraction, The second display consisted of a sixty foot banner, the entire length of the lobby ... so long in fact that Walter couldn't get the whole thing within camera range, and sent me a snap with just a portion of it showing.