Before there were moving pictures, there were movie showmen. In 1895 there were between 50,000 and 60,000 lantern showmen in the United States, giving between 75,000 and 150,000 performances a year. The chances are you’d go to a magic-lantern show, or as the showmen called them, a “stereopticon show.” was very high. Magic lantern shows were the combination of projected images, combined with live narration, and live music. This is the art form that gave birth to the movies.
Most were the equivalent of today’s “Discovery Channel” an illustrated lecture on subjects of popular interest like Travel, Science, and Art, using photographic glass lantern slides to create interest and excitement. In addition to this “moral entertainment” as the Victorians called it, there were shows that emphasized stories, songs, and comedy — the kind of shows that would evolve ten years later with the arrival of Mr. Edison’s moving picture.
The shows were generally held in meeting halls and churches, and were not usually advertised in the papers, but were treated as a news item, often with extensive descriptions before the shows, and reviews afterwards. Prices were nominal, which helped make attendance high. It was not unusual for a show in a small city to attract an audience of five hundred to a thousand.
Movies came into being, born of out of the audiences created by the Magic Lantern shows, then finding a life of their own. Chains were established, showmen were born, vital and creative men intent on capturing the energy and excitement of this new medium. America was a nation of immigrants anxious to learn about their new home. Movies provided the opportunity to do. They flocked to see all the latest releases and to soak in a movie created American culture
An Ohio based newspaper man, Korger Babb, found a job as the promotions manager for the Cincinnati based Chakeres-Warners movie theaters, where he would create different kinds of promotions to lure audiences into theatres. For example, a drawing to award two bags of groceries to one ticket holder at selected theaters. Another gimmick was to find a furniture store window where a bedroom suite was on display, and there Babb would place a large sign reading “Win a bedroom suit (theatre location & date listed)”. This always ensured a packed house, and the “lucky” winner was awarded with a pair of pajamas. These experiences told him he had a huge future in the exploitation movie business.
In the early 1940s Babb joined Cox and Underwood , a company that obtained the rights to poorly made or otherwise unmarketable films of subjects that were potentially controversial or shocking. It would often remove entire sections of these films and add material such as medical reels that lent itself to sensational promotion. Babb went on the road with a Cox and Underwood movie with the altered title Dust to Dust . Its profits allowed Cox and Underwood to retire from the business, leaving Babb to start his own company, Hygienic Productions. He opened his office near Wilmington, Ohio, and hired booking agents and advance salesmen.
Soon Babb was calling himself “America’s Fearless Young Showman” and he meant it. He made dozens of millions of dollars turning some of the worst films into box-office champions. Today his name and those of thousands like him are unknown to most exhibitors.
Babb’s was a supercharged classical American showman who turned sex, religion, and almost anything else into box office gold. For example, Babb took a 1948 filmed play of Christ’s Passion, produced out of Lawton, Oklahoma., where telephone poles were clearly visible behind the Cross and the accents were so thick, spouting dialog like “When’re y’ll gonna betray me?” that it became known as “the only film that had to be dubbed from English into English.”
Babb’s re-titled the movie “The Prince of Peace” and creating an promotions campaign with tag-lines like “Be Brave bring your troubles and your family to history’s most sublime event” and “You’ll find God – right in there”. Crowds streamed into the theatres. The Daily News called the movie’s success as “The Miracle of Broadway.”
Understanding Babb’s accomplishments and the accomplishments of his fellow showmen one has to look back to one of the least remembered eras of the movies, the days of the traveling exploitation show. In the 1920s, ’30’s, and into the ’40s a group of men calling themselves “the 40 thieves” crossed the American Mid West showing up in small towns with a film of a risque or sex educational nature, they showed it for a night or two in halls and basement, and left with pockets full of cash
Babb’s was touring in 1943 when he attended a town meeting in Burkburnett, Texas. The meeting was called because many local high school girls were being impregnated by men from a nearby Army Air Corps base. An idea came from the meeting that would set Babb’s on path of riches and notoriety.
Babb’s made the film entitled Mom and Dad for $62,000 invested by 20 individuals. Later Babb’s claimed that each investor, made back $63,000 for each thousand put in. Such was the power of “Mom and Dad.” Its international grosses have been estimated at anywhere from $40 to $100 million, and even Time Magazine claimed in 1949 that one out of 10 people in the world had seen it.
“Mom and Dad” did not explode because of its birth footage, featuring normal, breech birth, and cesarean section, or because of its puerile plot. The movie exploded as a result of Babb’s superhuman promotional abilities. His motto was “You’ve got to tell ’em to sell ’em.” Babb’s would simply blanket a town with advertising material, even pioneered the use of of direct mail advertising, colored fliers to every home in town..
Babb’s crowning achievements were his newspaper ads., Roaring out lines like “It Happens Somewhere Every Night!” and the classic. “One mistake . . . can ruin an entire lifetime of happiness.” other banners include “So bold – it’s shocking!”, “So human – you’ll both laugh and cry!”, “So wonderful – you’ll be lucky to get in!” And the topper, “You May Faint But You’ll Learn Facts!”
Viewers of “Mom and Dad” got more than a movie, they got a epic, with “Two Nurses in Attendance” with an additional lecture by “Elliot Forbes, Fearless Hygiene Commentator,” placed in the middle of the movies. The purpose of the lecture was to sell books, either “Father and Son” or “Mother and Daughter,.
This was not a single roadshow, at one time, Babb’s had 300 of these crack exploitation squads on the road at the same time, each complete with its own nurses and its own lecturer.
It is useful to reflect on the energy and vitality brought to the movies by showmen like Kroger Babb. Their sense of salesmanship on a grassroots level is more than inspiring. Recalling a day when a locally initiative could draw crowds into a movie, rather having to rely on the dictates of the major studios. It was a time in the business when the industry defined itself .
I love movie theatres. For me there will never be any place that provides the truest movie watching experience as a 400 plus seat auditorium. This experience will always beat whatever new f angled television you have at home and how many watts of sound your stereo can blast out. It will never be equaled …..period. It kind of shocks me that the industry as a whole has drunk the Kool-Aid poured out by the studios and have decided that that it is better to be the tail rather than the dog.
The problem is that tails are going out of fashion.
The motion picture exhibitors since the rise of the blockbuster, have done the bidding of the studios and in many ways contributed sadly to their own demise. I do remember a time when theatre owners and local theatre managers had a huge amount of control in the business cycle of movies. In the town I live in, the owner of the movie theatre always bought share in the respective movie studios so he had the right to speak at the shareholders meetings. A smart man, and a great showman.
The movie industry was founded by showmen, men and women who really understood the meaning of both words in the term, “show business” and who matched their hard-nosed business instincts with the panache to promote the movies to the people who mattered, the audience. These days, there are very few showmen left in the business, very few who would swap their suits for a vest and boxers before going on stage to introduce a new movie.
CinemaCon opens this week, the yearly convention held by the exhibition industry in Las Vegas. I can only imagine what people like Babb’s would do as the uniformity of marketing, reliance on blockbusters, and an absence of showmen.
Something tells me he would smell opportunity.
