Ballyhoo (Sep 23, 1955)

Page scan 0001 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Sep 23, 1955
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Sep 23, 1955) Profit Blitz for 'Fitz'
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.

F $10,000 IN CASH PRIZES hip. y Fir with showmans 7 PRO SERVE with showmanship SAVE with showmanship ©, hot. le @ ans, da dade. 1955 manship SELL with show HONOURING 25 YEARS OF INSPIRED LEADERSHIP IN FAMOUS PLAYERS National Drive Captain DAN KRENDEL FIRST THINGS FIRST Let's get one thing clear fellows ... I didn't ask for the job of "Drive Captain" ... but now that I'm IT, believe me I intend to do the best job I know how. I can't do it all by myself ... every one of you, from Murdochville to Prince Rupert will have to lend a hand. Between us we can make this the most talked about drive in the history of not only our company, but the whole industry in Canada. I want to place myself on record right now ... for the benefit of some of our cynics, and to allay the fears of my brother district managers, I am going to do this job without fear or favour ... I don't care if you're in one of the Ontario districts, Halifax, Vancouver, Winnipeg or what have you. You do a job and you'll get full credit. Asa matter of fact this makes it twice as tough on the boys in my own district as on anyone else on the circuit. In order to avoid charges of collusion I'll have to soft-pedal their efforts, and they know it and accept it, in the knowledge that I will be completely fair. Further ... I am voluntarily disqualifying myself from eligibility for participation in the district managers! prize money. If that isn't sufficient evidence of my complete impartiality ... then brother-r-r ... you can take over. I have also refused to sit on the judging panel ... I shall sift the entries, separate the wheat from the chaff, and send the prize material upstairs for judging by a panel consisting of Rube Bolstad, Morris Stein, Bob Eves and Jimmy Nairn. Satisfied? So now let's go ... Let's start the BLITZ. ake Ki Kae ae PRIZE DISTRIBUTION Don't forget, there are special weekly cash awards for IDEAS, for outstanding EXPLOITATION, for practical SUGGESTIONS for the improvement of our service, for ECONOMY hints. I have several entries on my desk now ... good ones. The winners and their prizes will be announced in next week's bulletin.