Ballyhoo (Oct 28, 1955)

Page scan 0003 from Ballyhoo

Record Details:

Title:
Ballyhoo
Date:
Oct 28, 1955
Volume:
Ballyhoo (Oct 28, 1955) Profit Blitz for 'Fitz'
Leaf #:
0003
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 17, 2025
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4 $10,000 | IN CASH PRIZES PROFIT with showmanshiP SERVE with showmanship SEPT. 5th iB TO DEC. 3rd ’ 2 SAVE with 1955 showmanship S ELL with show HONOURING 25 YEARS OF INSPIRED LEADERSHIP IN FAMOUS PLAYERS National Drive Captain DAN KRENDEL WHOSE BILLS DO YOU PAY? Th's a good thing that we have a wide-awake audit department ... or we might wind up financing most of the merchants in our town, and then wonder why our own figures look so red, Norm Jackson prougnt in a stack of bills the other day ... coal bills, which had been paid by one manager ... The catch is this ... checking over them, Norm discovered that four or five were for coal which had been delivered to a nearby restaurant ... Funny, huh? Our manager didn't even check them ... received the bills, approved them and turned them over to his assistant for payment. How blind can we get? Please fellows ... some of you have trouble enough finding the funds to pay your own jopbILes Go Let your neighbours worry about theirs, eh? Make sure that the bills you pay are for goods and services delivered to YOUR OWN theatre. Everybody!'1l be a lot happier. oXeXeXo DID YOU _XNOW ...? Last year over 50,000 mats were ordered through our own Publicity Depertment, and that my friends is an awful lot of lineage ... and designed to SAYE YOU a good many valuable lines of space too ... We have mats in every size you can think of ... designed from a survey conducted by Bert Brown many years ago. Youtll be a whole lot happier if you make a habit of ordering mats from the proofsheets sent to you periodically ... They reproduce much better than the press-book mats ... AND, they cost less too. This is YOUR department, fellows, and always at your service, Make good use of it. aXeXetKe CAN YOU BEAT THIS? Here I'm having all kinds of trouble trying to get some of you fellows to participate in our BLITZ ... and the other day I received an entry from a small theatre in the northern wilds of Saskatchewen ... Not even one of our theatres ... an independent. Don't know how he heard about our drive ... must have got hold of one of our bulletins somewhere, and wants in. Should be a lesson in this somewhere for those of you who are in on the ground floor, and aren't doing anything about it ...