Start Over

Ballyhoo (Apr 20, 1956)

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Apr 20, 1956
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Apr 20, 1956) National
Leaf #:
00017
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.

CAPITOL NORTH BAY Well «+e Our boy's come to life ... at least that's what two fairSized scrap books before me would indicate. His subject ... ROSE TATTOO ... and now let's glance inside the covers, Bob had a quantity of small decals made up, in the shape of a rose, with ROSE TATTOO on the face of the rose, and !coming! soon, Capitol! on the petals, These were distributed to all the teenagers around town, and the gals promptly affixed them to their pedal extremities ... legs to you ... which certainly attracted a lot of attention around town, The staff members wore them on their necks .,, NECKS? .:. well, that's what the man says, for a week in advanee of opening. These decals were also used to decorate the Water glasses at several local restaurants. Good windews were arranged with the Home Furnishing Co., Bannon Bros, Appliances ... Lovell's Music Store, Jackman Florist and the Freedman Furniture store. Bob's cenfection bar was used to good advantage to pre-sell his ROSE TATTOO date, and his candy attendants wore the tattoo decals em both arms, An excellent lobby display emphasized the ‘best actress! angle. A giant ROSE TATTOO book was made up and carried around the main streets three days before opening. Nerth Bay News Service bannered their trucks for one full week before opening and during the engagement. Palangio Motors placed a good 40 x 60 in their front window. The Singer Sewing Machine Company put in a good tAcademy Award! display in their Window ten days before the picture broke. Bob arranged for a tea cup reader to be on hand in a special booth in the lobby during the Monday and Tuesday matinees of TATTOO. The local Red Rose Tea salesman provided tea bags which were used as a give-away in conjunction with the tea cup reading. The ladies really went for this deal ... and the matinee business on the two days really jumped. Even the tough Nugget reluctantly came through with a small story on the tea cup reader a couple of days in advance, Bob hustled around and sold enough ads to make up a full ce-op page, headed ... "Your House Like ROSE TATTOO a Winner Through and Through", Excellent theatre copy dominated the page. Well .., I suppose I should let it go at that, but I can't help but compare this with some of your past campaigns Robert ... Oh It'll do ,.. as a start ... but, come on boy ... Let's get the feel of some of that old Zing of yours, huh? ake eee CAPITOL VICTORIA Robbie Robertson reports a very effective tie-up with the General Mills people. The local representative arranged some excellent window displays using the giant standee of the Lone Ranger on Silver, surrounded by a display of their products, and with good theatre art and copy dominating the display. Ten days in advance, an equally good display was placed in the lobby.