Ballyhoo (Oct 22, 1954)

Page scan 0007 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Oct 22, 1954
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Oct 22, 1954) Ontario 'B' District
Leaf #:
0007
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.

FEES UN DATS s T es! contest is now under way ... Hal Barnes’ contains a wealth of ideas and suggestions ... I've © pass along to you fellows ... They'ra good. The Central Sta datest bulletin selected a few 6 FOR HALLOW@EN OR SPECIAL SHOW Run a cartoon show with anamorphic lens on CinemaScope screen ... In a couple cf spots the managers ran complete two hour showa with phenomenal vesults ... in each instance drawing over 1500 kids. HOW ABOUT A “HE NEXLGHBOUR" OR FAMILY WEEK? This naturally requires a little judicicus care in lining up a suitable booking ... This kind of a week can create new customers, new habits, and build a lot of good-will. Use grocery give-aways, prizes for the largest family ... for those coming the greatest distance ... oldesi) family, ete. Sort of an expanded "Country Store" deal. It has proven successful in the past ... No reason why it can't be revived now. PLAY UP SPORT "HEROES" With hockey, football etc. in tho headlines, line up a few local heroes for personal. appearances at special kids! shows ... The "heroes" need that publicity ... and you know what the youngsters of today think of the glamour-boys. eX eKeKe Ko Xs FOLLOW-THRU ADS. How many of you spend most of your appropriation on pre-opening and opening day ads, and then have nothing left for your regular run? I know that some distributers insist on this arrangement when they allow us an "assist" ... but when I see an attraction like EGYPTIAN, DEMETRIUS or SEVEN BRIDES buried on its second, third and subsequent days ... with a forty or fifty line ad trying to compete with two and three hundred liners ... I wonder who's right and who's wrong. I think that you should leave yourself enough out of your budget to at least make sure that readers of the amusement page in your newspaper doen't require a magnifying glass to find your ad. odko ti oMo Koo LET'S HAVE A LITTLE TEAM-WORK Our new contest .., I haven't a name for it yet ... is due to break during the first week in November. I think you're dead wrong Lf you don't cut in EVERY member of your staff. Take your employees into your confidense regarding your propesed activities in the contest ... Believe me, they'll be awful proud if their boss wins, with an assist from them. I know they can come up with some pretty good suggestions. Maybe we can cut them in on the prizes in sone way o.Let's think about it.