Showmen's Trade Review (Jan-Mar 1947)

18 SHOWMEN'S TRADE REVIEW, March 1, 1947 Money Dates for April National Observance Periods. APRIL 1: APRIL FOOL'S DAY. While this is not a holiday, a large share of the public will be feeling gay-hearted, ready to play jokes on their fellowmen. Take advantage of this spirit by staging an April Fool's Matinee or Midnight Show designed for laughing purposes only. To promote gaiety, arrange for some of your patrons to act as ushers; their mistakes will be regarded as adding to the fun. Pictures might at first appear on the screen upside down; the janitor and his helpers could begin their cleaning tasks while the performance is on. Use any gag you can thing of that will get a laugh or give a momentary shock of surprise. But, above all, don't forget to let your patrons know in advance that it will be a crazy April Fool's show, otherwise you will cause resentment on the part of some, and dampen the spirits of others. APRIL 6: EASTER SUNDAY. This is also ARMY DAY, giving you a double-barreled shot at getting patrons into your theatre. The United States entered World War I in 1917 and this makes it fitting that you pay honor to the heroes of that conflict and of World War II. Offer the use of your theatre for any community observance of the day. There may be army equipment in your town which you can borrow for display, with flags in your lobby. Easter Sunday, however, is the big occasion for the exhibitor to bring his showmanship knowledge and know-how into play. There are too many activities suitable for the occasion to be enumerated here. Let your imagination have full play, not, however, forgetting the religious character of the day, which you can make a real money date. A big Easter Egg Hunt in a park is a stunt that can be used in nearly any community. Get your local merchants to sponsor it and contribute prizes for the boys and girls finding the most eggs, which should be gaily colored and concealed in various places. Have them gather at a certain spot in the park at a designated time. At the world "Go," there will be a lively scramble and much fun for the youngsters. A follow-up should be an Easter matinee for children, with candy eggs, bunnies, etc., contributed by a confectioner who should get credit on your screen and in your heralds and other advertising. Toy rabbits and other Easter novelties might be promoted as gifts for the children — or even a few live chicks. With Easter coming early in the month there may not be many flowers in bloom in the northern states, but there will be enough to make a Flower Matinee possible several days before Easter. Local women would willingly collect the flowers brought by patrons and give them to orphanages, old folks' homes, etc. If your Easter week attraction features a feminine star, a tieup with the local newspaper can be arranged as a contest for sketching an Easter bonnet for her. A sketch or photo of the star should be cut off at the forehead, with ample space above the head for sketching in the bonnet. A local milliner may be induced, for the publicity she would get, to contribute a bonnet to the person drawing the best sketch. For another Easter bonnet stunt, get a department store to sponsor a search for the funniest, outmoded Eastern bonnet. They could be brought to your theatre or to the store and made into a window display. A committee would then select the funniest hats, with suitable prizes (which the store would probably contribute) for the most outlandish femnine headgear. Or take another angle: have the hats worn on your stage by a number of local girls, with free tickets to the show as bait, or, if you have girl ushers, they could wear the hats while on duty or display them on the stage. A flower contest for Easter Week will attract people to your theatre. Offer prizes for the best home-grown plants or flowers cultivated by the contestants. Arrange them attractively in the lobby and have a committee of florists select the best. Tags attached to the plants or flowers should carry code numbers only, so the judges will not know the names of the contestants. An enterprising florist may be induced to install an Easter floral display in the lobby of your theatre in return for a credit card of a flash on your screen. Tie up with cleaning establishments to carry "clean up" messages, coming from your theatre, on their garment bags ; give them stills of the stars of your Easter Week attractions for display in their windows, with cards bearing some such message as "Dress as smartly as (name of star) and you'll be the standout attraction of the Easter parade." A transportation tieup may be arranged with street car, bus or taxi concerns to carry signs offering to convey patrons to your theatre. As good-will builders, donate your theatre for a community church service; arrange to check packages for patrons for 10 days or two weeks preceding Easter. Such Easter symbols as baby chicks, bunnies and colored Easter eggs should be used as a background for your lobby display, and use cutouts of rabbits and eggs for your shadow-boxes and still boards. Then use your imagination to think up other stunts that may have an especially local application. Your Easter week attendance is up to you. Special Tieup Opportunities. APRIL 7-13: NATIONAL BE-KIND-TO-ANI MALS WEEK. A good stunt for the occasion is a parade of the kiddies, with prizes offered for the best looking dogs, cats, or the best trick-performing animals, or the most amusing, etc. Guest tickets will prove inexpensive prizes and will induce children to enter their pets. It is worth trying to get an official of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to appear nightly on your stage and give a talk on humane treatment of animals. The Warner short subject, "A Boy and His Dog" is tied-in with this special observance, so make an effort to book it and exploit it accordingly. APRIL 14 to 20: NATIONAL BOYS CLUB WEEK. Communities having such an organization should set aside a special night for boys who are members of the club to appear o the stage and go through some of their training drills or tell the advantages of being a member of the organization. It will attract the boys' parents and other relatives and their friends just to see them on the stage. APRIL 20-26: WORLD FELLOWSHIP WEEK: A rewarding stunt for this week would be to get a well-known clergyman, lawyer or business man and the principal of the high school or superintendent of schools to give talks during an intermission between shows on world fellowship, on how to eradicate race or religious prejudice or other kindred topic. APRIL 24: FIRST NEWSPAPER, BOSTON NEWS LETTER, PUBLISHED 1704. By observing this anniversary you can cement the goodwill of your local newspapers. Prepare a lobby display that will show the advances made in the gathering and dissemination of news, and the important part newspapers play in keeping the public informed of local, national and world events. An editor might be induced to give a brief talk along this line. The lobby display might include a teletype machine, loaned by a newspaper, samples of different type fonts and examples of stories from the original hand or typewriter story to the galley of type and a proof of the galley, and a page from the paper showing the published article. APRIL 26-MAY 3: NATIONAL BOYS AND GIRLS WEEK. Tie up with any boys or girls' organization of national standing for drills or other examples of their activities to be staged in your theatre. You might arrange with a leading citizen to talk on the advantages to the nation to be derived from such children's organizations and urge parents to enroll their own youngsters in them. APRIL 27: MORSE INVENTOR OF TELEGRAPHY, BORN 1791. Arrange with the local telegraph company for a display of old and new forms of communication by wire in your lobby. Along with this have an attendant, preferably from th telegraph company, demonstrate the Morse code, giving a message about a coming feature, then have him decipher it for patrons. But be sure the message is a real one or some bright youngsters wil catch you up on it. APRIL 27: AUDUBON, NATURALIST, BORN 1780. The public schools are your best bet to get valuable publicity for your theatre in this connection. Offer, through the schools, guest tickets, or other prizes, for the best essays on Audubon, or the best drawing of a bird after an Audubon original. Sectional Observances. 1-7. Conservation Week in Patriots' Day in number of Massachusetts and April states. April 19: Maine. April 26: Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. Anniversaries. April 2: First U. S. mint established in 1792. April 4 : Beginning of commercial transmission of pictures by wire, 1925. April 6: Peary discovered the North Pole, 1909. April 7 : Metropolitan Opera House, New York, opened, 1880. April 8: Ponce de Leon landed at St. Augustine, Fla., in search of the Fountain of Youth, 1513. April 9: Fall of Bataan, 1942. April 12: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Ga., 1945. April 13: President Thomas Jefferson born, 1743. April 19 : U._ S. off the gold standard, 1933. ^ April 21 : Spanish-American war begun, 1898. April 28: Maryland entered the Union, 1788. April 30: Washington inaugurated first President, 1789. Red House Seaich Contest Realty 'Red House' Tieup A realty firm-newspaper-theatre contest search for a red house for sale by the J. R. Kipp and Sons Realty Company, was a novelty promotion stunt for United Artists' "The Red House" at Loew's Regent Theatre in Harrisburg. A greater novelty in the tieup was that the realty firm sought it instead of Manager Sam Gilman having to sell the idea to the firm. Gilman later received a letter from Kipp stating "We hope to work with you again soon in other contests," and voicing his satisfaction with the "Red House" promotion. The newspaper cooperating in the exploitation was the Harrisburg Telegraph which asked readers to locate the "red house," a picture of which appeared in an ad paid for by the realty firm. Contestants were to give approximate locales and win guest tickets to the theatre while "The Red House" was showing. The Kipp Company had a real red house for sale located not far from Harrisburg. Following first appearance of the ad Kipp received about 100 replies of which 40 were correct, while Gilman received an equal number at the theatre. Some contestants sent in their guesses at the location by long-distance telephone. United Artists found the stunt so rewarding that it sent a photostatic copy of one of the ads the same day to all exhibitors who had booked the film. First manager to fall in with the idea was Larry Levy, manager in Reading, who put on a similar campaign. Gilman did not stop with the "red house" contest but bought radio time and built a special front which featured a "red house" all around the box-office, with signboard posterlike effects on the pseudo-paneling. Glimpses of Star Edward G. Robinson and other players were given patrons of the preceding and current bills through imitation windows on the sides of the box-office "house." 40 'Miss Pilgrims' See Car able Film Preview The graduation class of the Jones Commercial High School in Chicago — 40 modern "Miss Pilgrim" — were given a preview of 20th Century-Fox's "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," as a promotional stunt for the film's showing at the Oriental Theatre. Novelty of the exploitation arranged by Al Winston and Virginia Seguin of the company's Chicago exploitation staff, cracked the daily newspapers in that city. In the picture Betty Grable uses the Remington Model No. 1 typewriter, the world's oldest writing machine, and one was on display at the invitational preview. Its operation was demonstrated by the members of the commercial school's graduating class. The Chicago Daily Ncivs published a twocolumn photo of the demonstratation and the Chicago Sun also gave it space. Lie-Detector Reviews Twin sisters were invited by Manager Jim McCarthy of the Strand, Hartford, Conn., to attend the showing of Universal-International's "The Dark Mirror" with a lie detector attached to each girl while the film was on the screen. Then the two girls wrote reviews of the picture for a local newspaper. The stunt was played up in advance as a means of getting the girls' true reactions to the picture. — HFD.