Ballyhoo (May 1957)

Page scan 0001 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
May 1957
Volume:
Ballyhoo (May 1957, no date) 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.

PRIZES (cont'd g20.00 Headed for Al Hartshorn at the Regent in Oshawa for excellent planning and follow-thru on his second series of ELMEK parties. 20.00 To Lloyd Taylor who hangs his hat at the Palace in Guelph, for fine jobs on GIANT and BUNDLE OF JOY. 15.00 Headed Gordon Carson's way at the Fort in Fort William ... for his Movies Stamp planning, and a novel and profitable Valentine Day deal. 15.00 —On its way to Jack Mahon at the Orpheum in Prince Albert ... this time for an excellent promotion job on REACH FOR THE SKY. 15.00 —In the mails to Freeman Skinner of the Paramount in Halifax ... for terrific ELMER selling. 15.00 To Olga Frenette, head lady of the Orpheum in the Soo, for an outstanding job of publicizing her engagement of YOU CAN'T RUN Al.AY FROM IT. 15.00 Going to Otis Bowes of the Capitol in Moose Jaw for good planning and selling of GIANT. 15.00 On its way to Johnny Pungente of the Strand in Brandon for his Satmat deal with a local merchant which nets him several thousands of extra bucks each year, 15.00 To Charlie Dilley of the Paramount in Port Arthur, for an outstanding job of selling on WAR AND PHACE. 10.00 Headed for Andy Ostrander of the Uptown in Winnipeg for the clever letter he designed to get that 'Lost Audience! back into his theatre. 10.00 To Arthur Fitch of the Paramount in Kentville, for his good planning in building up his kids'! and adults! Saturday matinee business. oh Os wks oe a ee Well ... that's the list lads ... Over five hundred bucks is now on its way to the gentlemen listed above for their good thinking ... good planning .., and good all-out Showmanship ... sorry uf YOUR name doesn't appear ... but I can't put it there ... You've got to do something about it too. Let's see if we can't get you on our next prize list, huh? To the winners ... congratulations, and every one of you well earned this recognition. To those who came close ... Well, better luck next time, and KEEP TRYIN', There will be another _ judging just as soon as we have enough material in to warrant it.