Ballyhoo (Nov 19, 1954)

Page scan 0005 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Nov 19, 1954
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Nov 19, 1954) Ontario 'B' District
Leaf #:
0005
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.

CENTURY HAMILTON Guess I didn't get Mel in last week ... Gould be that — didn't receive his entry in time. I note that he covers four separate attractions which had played his house recently, THE BIGAMIST ... DEVIL'S CANYON ... THEY WHO DARE, and GAMBLER FROM NATCHEZ. On each of the above, the Review ran a free ad on thelies merchant's Go-op page. The News .o» now a daily, has been coming through with plenty of good scenes ... some five celumns across .o-. Hope they keep it up, at laast until they've proven themselves. Den't forget to send me tear sheets as evidence ... Not that I doubt you boy ... but What's gance for the goose must be sauce Lor Jolley. Mel has effected a deal with the lecal Kresga store, whereby on thelr weekly broadcast over G H M L every Friday from cight to nine P.M. the Century receives valuable plugs in return for three single ducats used as prizes. The store also places one of Mel's attraction boards directly behind the broadcast stage in their stora ... and with nearly 1,000 customers milling around, it's a pretty doggone good location. The Brant Inn, popular local night club, also has a Friday night broadeast ever the same station ... and here too Mel manages to get in with seme goed theatra plugs. Total cost two single ducats. Mel seg .o"Watch my next week's entry ... dts a doozer" ... We're watching Mel ... Hope you knock off a million points, BROADWAY TIMMINS Bob was playing LAW AND ORDER ... and here's how he sold this one. Every traffie light, at all the main intersections was decorated with large signs reading ... "Obey the LAW ... Gross with the Green Light, ete." Naturally theatre copy ineluded. Beb's doorman was dressed as & cowhand, complete with cap guns which he shet off periodically ... When not taking tickets, this gent rode around town on a suitably placarded equine, shooting up the town. GF GC L still giving Robert haif an hour a day to chat about the movies, Roliywesd news ... and by seme strange coincidence ... most of the movies he talks about just happen to be attractions scheduled for showing at the Broadway ... As part of his thirty minutes, Bob ran a LAW AND ORDER contest, and the station also kicked in three free spots daily for eight days ooo Drew quite a bundie of mail. The Daliy Press ran a good picture and story of Bob's election to the presidency of the lecal Kiwanis club, with plenty of theatre credit. An sditorial in the same paper, conmenting on the excellent results of the recent beauty contest also eredited Bob with much of the suecess ef the venture ... Good P.R. Bob ... Keep it up.