Ballyhoo (Sep 17, 1954)

Page scan 0002 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Sep 17, 1954
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Sep 17, 1954) Ontario 'B' District
Leaf #:
0002
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.

POOR, POOR ROBBRE "Qn thave a note from Bob Harvey ... a kinda plaintive note ... The boy's got troubles ... but I'l] let you judge. He writes ... "Speaking of my wife, what gives with you and her? ..AS soon as she read your latest BALLYHOO, where you mention that I might win that hundred bucks if I Bucite down in the next contest, out she went and spent the money, PLUS ... on a new rug, 80 that now I've got to try and win the -+--contest. However, I did manage to get my five bucks out of the Last fifty... How about giving the prize money to the wives, so that the guy who doe3 all the work will get a piece of the dough? ..." Nice thought Robert ... and it will receive our considered opinion ..-. ALL I can say right now is ... Nice going Eileen ... Keep that guy on his toes. Incidentally, how's that sprained ankle of yours doing? All better I trust. CONGRATULATIONS MARY WALTON Who's Mary Walton? ... good question ... She's the littie gal who acts as night cashier for Olga up at the Soo, and a talented young Miss she is. Seems that Mary was quite the child prodigy on the violin, and this year, with a little nudging from Olga, decided to enter the Open Class Violin Competition at the C.WN.b. On August 27th, Mary competed with violinists from every part of the Dominion, and barely missed the gold award, by half @ point. A girl from Vancouver knocked off 35 5 points, and Hary wound up with &5. BUT ... the following day it was discovered that the young lady from B.C. was disqualified on the grounds of being a professional, which would seem to indicate that Mary Walton automatically receives first prize. To date the final results have not been announced ... but we're ail pulling for the F.P. gal, from the Soo. Hope you get it Mary, and again, our sincere congratulations. ADVERTISING Costs Watch it fellows ... for a whihe we were really holding the line in the way of expense control ,.. but seems that a couple of you have slipped away ont of line, I'LL repeat what I've told you previously ove Your budgets have received the very closest scrutiny here in the office, and I have on several occasions discussed then with each manager individually, We have all agreed that they are fair, and sufficient to cover all your needs. In the past few weeks however, some of you have gone overboard in your advertising expenditures, for no apparent reason, and without requesting budget increases from this office. Take i% easy guys ... and Let me in on the secret oon. If the expenditure is justified, I'll be the first to say O0.K. If nob’ eoo then STAY WITHIN YOUR BUDGET. Comprenez vous? And this may be a good time to review all of your expenses. A iittle tightening up is indicated ... Why not do it yourself?