Sunday, December 5, 2010

BoxOffice Magazine, December 12, 1939

BoxOffice, December 12, 1939

The early material is extremely garbled (I had to remove some characters because it was registering as HTML), due to what is probably an image based Gulliver ad, then a bunch of Gulliver news jammed together making it difficult to guess at a reconstruction. Don't get discouraged; it improves further down.
Check out page 81, where kids were encouraged to bring a pack of cigarettes for the troops so they could see some free cartoons...

Ad on early page? Left here in all its OCR mangled glory. With a little luck BoxOffice's archives will open a little more and will provide an image.

"FEATURE CARTOON A FUU-LENGTH Hours o

,

_.;oin.,en.

Two The Most Wonderful Ever Known. .he screen Hos

Gulliver with the shipwrecked

rN A David Glory and Prince Sneak, Snoop and

The three dastardly th^^^^^^^^^

Itch.

spies.

^^^^^^^^ pigeon ... and tno the carrier

SPECTACLE

tian horses

as Gulliver,

single-handed

cap-

ADVENTURE

^lngthednyLilliputians-23,OOOofthe..

the antics of ache LAUGH till your sides Gabby the folk, especially h el lov ble little the g.ar,tGulUver,

at

:r::^ entire

drag

hit

tpuenemy Heet.^a^tii.U scastl King the giant to the

SONGS...a

himself in the dark. but couldn-t find

own

crier,

who

discovered

Robin and Ralph

1Ut Moonlight,

•'

Leo parade of them by including Rainger

"I 1

"Bluebirds in the -Faithful Forever,'•We're All

MEET

)000 people

d (his

ad

Kine

of this wonderful the inhabitants terrible-tempered rival, his

Little

isle:

Hear a Dream, nea All Together Now,

and

in

lERTY!

KrngBlbc.the

A Paromount

DAV-Words •rrsAHAP HAP HAPPV

Pnncess two singing lovers,

-Forever!" Well," -Faithful,'

Fleischer Directed by Dove

<"^'°"•'"' Copyright 1939, P.r«no>.!'<

Picture



Produced by

Max Meischer



„dMu.icbyAl.J.N=ibure.

j„dS.mmyTimberg&WI"»t°»

I

A GIANT of

a picture

• • •

backed by a GIANT of an advertising campaign!

$250,000

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN!

More than 100,000,000 readers

"Gulliver"

is

of these national

publications will read the great

news

is

that

coming

.

.

.

and every ad

timed

to break so that exhibitors reap fullest benefits!

"GULLIVER" LICENSEES DO A NATIONAL SELLING JOB FOR YOU

spending more than $100,000 to promote "Gulliver" merchandise national magazines and every ad is a boost for the picture!

.

.

."

-------


p28A? possible conflation:
""Gulliver's Travels" Available

At 40 % or Profit Sharing

Mid-Continent Meeting Calls Robert Gillham

Kansas City Robert H. Gillham, publicity and advertising head for Paramount, met here during the week with Jack DaUey, Bill Lansburg and Karl Kruger, field exploiteers, on "Gulliver's




New York—Paramount

liver's

is

selling

"Gul-



Travels," full length cartoon, at either 40 per cent or "top flat rentals" in which a profit-sharing arrangement is agreed upon when the gross hits a certain figure, it is learned. Exhibitors who play the film late were taken into consideration when the profit-

Travels."

Studio matters were discussed with Cliff

studio advertising and publicity head, the middle of the week. The two sessions here avoided a coast trip for Gillham, who returned to New York later in the week.

Lewis,

sharing plan was decided upon, it is said, in realization of what the company hopes will see extended and moveover run engagements getting "the cream of the business." These bookings will be at percentage."

"Travel

Ahead

of Gulliver



Just the first section of a long train of Paramount exploiteers who will blanket the country in behalf of "Gulliver's Travels" is this group of six, already pitching away as follows: Left to right. Ralph Ravenscroft covering Detroit. Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis and Cincinnati; Thomas Jefferson for New York state; Harlan Hobbs for Atlanta. New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham and Nashville; Vernon Gray for Scranton. Wilkes-Barre. Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Richmond; Clinton Bolton in Boston, Providence. Worcester. Hartford, New Haven, Springfield and Portland, and Ben Hill, covering Dallas, Houston, San Antonio. Fort Worth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa."

28h:
"anticipates "Gulliver's Travels" will gross $3,000,000 in the domestlc market. There are nine field exploitcers now working or the picture scheduled to be released"


p29(a?):
"election of employes in four cartoon plants, to determine their bargaining agent, for January 16. Date was set back at the request of the Screen Cartoonists Guild, which is negotiating for an AFL charter. Voting will take place in the Lantz, Metro, Katz and Schlesinger studios. The Screen Writers Guild's executive board has scheduled an open meeting for December 4, to which the general membership has been invited. A discussion of the 'current labor situation, as it affects the SWG, is planned."

p32?
"Metro announces that Hugh Harman is preparing to produce a Technicolor cartoon, "Romeo and Juliet," which the studio claims will be the first cartoonization of the Shakespeare classic. Many exhibitors are of the impression that the studio made a cartoon of that title, with Leslie Howard portraying Romeo, about two years ago."

p34?
"voices and musical backgrounds for "Gulliver's Travels," fea-ture-length Technicolor cartoon, using a chorus of 110 voices."

p44
"The Appleton in Appleton conducted an all-cartoon program for youngsters turning in old toys in a tieup with Sears, Roebuck & Co. in that city. The toys were turned over to the for renovation"

p60
"Max Blumenthal was host to sixty youngsters of the industry children of exhibitors, employes, etc. at a special cartoon show Thanksgiving morning, after they saw the Santa Claus Parade from the Film Exchange. Charley Snyder and Jacob Boodman assisted in handling the crowd."


"William M. Gardner, of Gardner Disis president of Toyad Corp., with manufacturing plant at Latrobe, which opened shop this week, turning out sponge rubber toys, mannikins, exhibit and display figures and papier mache characters, many of them replicas of film cartoon "stars." Toyad Corp. has been licensed by Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. to use a special type of foam rubber. Firestone will continue the manufacture of sponge rubber chair seats."

p73

"Fleischer Premiere

Scheduled Dec. 18

"Gulliver's Travels," the Max Fleischer full length Technicolor feature, and, inciden,


""The present dearth of men and women who can drain acting ability from their systems to their fingertips and then transfer it successfully to celluloid is handicapping the mass production of long animated cartoons to the point of stymieing it to death," Fleischer adds emphatically.

Because he realizes that talent is futile without technical training, he has induced the Miami art school to schedule classes in animation; and regrets deeply that colleges are not sufficiently cartoon conscious to recognize the service they would be doing their students by making such courses regular features of standard curricula."


"Six Questions Alike

Over CBS For "Gulliver's" Debut

Set Broadcast

Broadcasting Columbia Miami The System will carry a special nationwide broadcast starring Lanny Ross, with Jessica Dragonette as his guest star, in conjunction with the world premiere of "Gulliver's Travels."

It will originate Columbia's outlet here from Station WQAM, on December 18, at 11:00 a.m. and 1:45 p. m. for re-broadcasting to coast outlets. Premiere of the feature-length cartoon takes place that evening at the Sheridan in Miami Beach."

p80
"country's first "transconpicture is the newest title being given to Max Fleischer's "Gulliver's Travels," now being rushed to completion at the new Miami studios. This full-length Technicolor feature is being so tabbed as the result of some recent higher mathematics on the part of several studio employes who figure that the film already has traveled some 176,800 miles, mostly by air. Why? The individual celluloids are being drawn and photographed in Miami while the film development is being executed in the laboratories of the Technicolor lA corporation in Hollywood. If"

""Gulliver's Travels," which will have its world premiere at the Sheridan Theatre on the beach, will be shown all over the country before Christmas."

p81
"Think of Troops

To provide Canadian troops with reading material and other comforts, two of the theatres in Ottawa have conducted special Saturday morning shows for juveniles, the admission charge for which are three recent magazines, a fiction book or a package of cigarettes. The screen program comprised cartoons and other appropriate pictures. The two theatres cooperating in the movement were the Capitol, a Famous Players' house, and the Elgin, an independent. The lobbies were piled high with a wide assortment of publications."

p87
"Sleeping Princess

(Walter Lantz Cartune)

Universal

10 Mins.

An amusing bit of cartoon fantasy in (Which the little princess suffers because 'the invitation to Destiny goes astray. Offended, the little princess is put to sleep until awakened by the kiss of a prince. Destiny finds the ancient invitation in time and makes everything right by changing the unworthy one into a prince charming."

"Pied Piper Porky

(Merrie Melody)

Antics of Pied Piper Porky are fairly amusing in this cartoon. Only one rat remains (who sounds like Rochester) to plague Porky. The rat emerges victorious even after Porky sends a cat after him."


p44
"Disney's"

p34?
"Dave Fleischer, who "Gulliver's directed

Travels" for Paramount, hosted a party the combined scoring and dubbing crews of the Paramount and Fleischer studios. Eighty musicians, technicians and other guests attended."

4 comments:

  1. I wonder if the Harman cartoon is 'Romeo in Rhythm'?
    What I've found interesting reading these labour stories is that Clampett's Katz unit was treated as a separate bargaining entity than the rest of the Schlesinger studio. I suppose it's because they got paid by Katz.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You may not need to struggle like this much longer:

    http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/the_vault

    As you can see, BoxOffice is adding the former issuu files (with an easier navigating system) much faster than planned. It looks like they'll get to 1939 just as you finish with it.
    Tip: when you click through to a given year, each issue is represented both by a small cover image and a PDF download icon. The PDFs don't work yet (they act as dead links), but the cover image links do allow for online reading and screengrabbing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I know. My fear is that the availability is an error they will correct if too many people access it. My alternate fear is that it may only be available until it is fully ready.

    At any rate, reading the entirety of each issue is very time consuming. It would be nice to have the images to correct unsolvable errors like those seen here, but searchable text is more important. s the new versions don't seem searchable, I may be left with using them as a fallback position from google text caches.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted, you must mean the 2nd and not the 12th.
    HERE is the first page of the Gulliver ad.

    Btw, Boxoffice for Dec. 16th reviews 'Fagin's Freshman.'

    Yowp

    ReplyDelete