Showmen's Trade Review (Jul-Sep 1945)

16 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW July 21, 1945 Contests Sell 'Gray^ In Reading Campaign SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS. Presented as something for the boys who have returned from the fighting hnes, the showing of 20th Century-Fox's "The Way Ahead" at the Capitol Theatre, Niagara Falls, Ontario, was marked by a matinee patronized by many young men and women of the Canadian armed forces who are now residents of the Convalescent Home, No. 7, Oakes Division. It was an impressive occasion that pleased the invited guests, thrilled the cash customers and made George L. Watson, relief manager, very happy. Other showmen would do well to follow the example set by Watson at the Capitol. ^Where Do We Go^ New York Campaign Sets Pattern For Other Key City Runs To herald the advent of a new type of musical screen fare, 20th Century-Fox's combined advertising, publicity and exploitation departments, under the direction of Hal Home, created a novel campaign, designed to launch "Where Do We Go From Here?" for its run at the Roxy Theatre in New York. A long-in-advance pubHcity campaign was launched by Harry Brand's studio publicity department, with activities shifting to the east at the completion of the picture, where the home office publicity staff's copy resulted in such publicity breaks as a special box in the Daily Mirror, headlined "Zanything Goes!" and talking up the zany dialog. Continual plugging for the premiere via column and news stories, totaling almost 100 individual items, stirred up advance speculation and created interest among New York moviegoers. Special material created exclusively for the syndicate wires of AP, Acme, King Features, INP, and NANA, yielded heavy coverage nationally. The magazine units of the publicity departments, east and west, worked hand in hand to promote coverage for "Where Do We Go From Here?" in fan and national publications, with Life, Collier's, Parade, Saturday Evening Post, Look and Yank carrying full and half-page breaks, both color and black-and-white. There were almost 50 individual features on the Technicolor musical in fan magazines, including many full-page color breaks, pictorial layouts, fictionizations, and special articles. Together with the publicity in the magazine medium, two-color, full-page ads, appeared in Life, Redbook, the Screenland Unit, Screen Guide, Seventeen, Modern Screen and other outstanding fan publications totaling better than 8,500,000 circulation. A strong radio campaign, harnessed to the original features of "Where Do We Go From Here?" shot 338 individual spots over local and network stations including WEAF, WJZ, WOR, WNEW and WHN. A snipe campaign blanketed metropolitan and suburban New York with paper. Four hundred 24-sheets were posted on prominent boards. Quantity postings included : 1875 six-sheets, 1875 four-sheets, 2500 three-sheets and 625 onesheets. The subway advertising, covering all transit systems, included : 167 three-sheets in the IRT terminals, 710 three-sheets in the Inde pendent stations, and 83 three-sheets in the BMT stations. Posting started with the opening of the picture and were to continue throughout the run. Coverage also was effected in the terminals and trains of the New York, New Haven & Hartford, Long Island, and Hudson & Manhattan railroads, with 11 x 42 car cards and one and three-sheets. Advance radio publicity broke on network programs whose combined audience, via Crosley ratings, amounted to 98 million listeners. Outstanding among these were Lux Radio Theatre, Information Please, Screen Guild Players and Which Is Which. Three tunes, out of the GershwinWeill score of "Where Do We Go From Here?" are being published by Chappell & Co. : All At Once, If Love Remains and Song of the Rhineland, affording promotional tieups with music shops. A national free ad tieup, effected through the combined efforts of Brand's studio publicity staff and the New York exploitation department, on the Westmore cosmetic, Overglo, netted a number of national ads with heavy credit for "Where Do We Go From Here?" and, further, permits drugstore window and counter displays throughout the country to coincide with playdates. McCormick Approves Pre-Selling Campaign on New Product S. Barret McCormick RKO Radio director of advertising and publicity, has approved extensive national advertising campaigns on International's "Along Came Jones," "George White's Scandals" and Samuel Goldwyn's "Wonder Man." The pre-selling campaign includes 20 different mediums with a combined circulation close to 70 million. An extensive campaign on "The Spanish Main" has also been approved with coverage reaching approximately 300 million persons, with more mediums still to be added. Sager's Letter-Writing Contest A letter-writing contest in which contestants were to suggest a name for a dog was one of the stunts used by Jerry Sager for the showing of MGM's "Son of Lassie" at the Criterion Theatre, New York. One of the most extensive exploitation campaigns yet essayed for MGM's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" has been completed by Larry Levy, manager of Loew's Colonial Theatre, Reading, in collaboration with his assistant, Martha Warner, and Ed Gallner, MGM representative. Several comparatively new angles were used, including the "hidden picture" gag with a twist that had a local radio station sponsoring the contest and taking space in the city's newspapers to plug it, in addition to the 54 announcements given to the contest over the air. Photos of the star in character were placed in manila envelopes and hidden in various parts of the city, such as in the City Park, the railroad station, behind a recruiting poster in the post office, under a settee in a hotel lounge, etc. The radio's announcements added clues each day. War Bond prizes and guest tickets were given to finders. Another outstanding promotion was the arrangement with an artists' supply store by which the store transformed its largest window into an_ artist's studio and had a young woman artist paint a "Picture of Dorian Gray," changing the face progressively from day to day as the supposed dissipation of Gray changed the photo in the picture. A contest established in connection with the display asked for colored photos of Gray, treated in any one of a dozen media, indicating the amateur artist's conception of how Gray would look after years of riotous living, etc. War Bond prizes were given away in this contest also. The store bought radio and newspaper time and space to publicize its own interests in the contest. Specially designed newspaper advertising, teasers galore, both in newspapers and in the theatre, additional cooperative ads with beauty salons and jewelers; car cards, book marks, heralds, counter cards, war plant promotions via a special letter pass, and other media were used in the extensive campaign. 'Dorian Gray' Sketch Contest Joe Saperstein, manager of the Grand Theatre, Albany, N. Y., arranged a tieup with the Faille Art School for a year's free tuition for the winner of a contest on the best sketch of Donna Reed, featured in MGM's "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Over 200 applications have already been reported. — AL. H»HOS0KE * « TNf ^ IN EVERY NOOK, CORNER. Teaser cards, like that shown above, were planted in every nook and corner of Loew's State, Providence, by Manager J. G. Samartano, prior to the playdate of MGM's "The Picture of Dorian Gray."