Samples Of How It Played

Pulling Ambersons Plow Through Exhibition

Here are ads from The Magnificent Ambersons. There are thousands more for whoever might give effort to flush them out. The truest story of public reception to any film is told by ads, not critics or reviews. Showmen had to gauge pulse of their customers and sell accordingly. They knew better than Hollywoodwhat a public would buy, and how preference could change from one week, or day, to the next. The Magnificent Ambersons would have been but vaguely familiar to most theatre men. There was a novel source, but published in 1918. How many busy exhibs read it, or cared to? Radio listeners may have recalled the story from Welles' Campbell Playhouse of several years before (ad for that above). The Magnificent Ambersons would have been part of a season commitment with RKO for independents not part of that company's theatre chain. A pressbook might advise on how to sell, but that help only went so far. Much of management considered pressbooks useless, if not a joke. Putting a man on the street with a sandwich board --- that's as inspired as home offices often got. The Magnificent Ambersons had been shortened to a point where it could play top or bottom of a double feature. Key spots had live performers to back up the doubtful attraction: Bert Wheeler, Ned Sparks, and Buster West in Baltimore, Phil (Laughing Irish Eyes) Ragan for Frisco's first-run, Shirley Ross in Milwaukee. Think anyone was impatient to get past these for The Magnificent Ambersons?

Double feature placement was no more degrading than for any RKO release. Yes, The Magnificent Ambersons did play with Mexican Spitfire Sees A Ghost in Chicago and L.A., at least at the top of the bill, and goodness knows customers could use a laugh after time spent with the Ambersons. The Film Daily saw things that way and called The Magnificent Ambersons "pointlessly depressing." There were holdovers in Syracuse, New Orleans, Washington, other places, but subsequent runs knew these for anomaly you got with urban trade. "Scandal staggered the city" was how best to sell the Ambersons, even if no such thing happens in the movie, but what was that but RKO overlooking a swell spin that local management could now augment? Powder magazine to heat up staid Ambersons was war-driven and often the lead lure for ads, as here for John Ford's The Battle Of Midway topping a three-day stand. Or RKO's Orpheum tendering India At War as March Of Time buttress to The Magnificent Ambersons and crackerjack thriller Kid Glove Killer from MGM. Note outgoing Mrs. Miniver as "The Greatest Picture Ever Made." The Magnificent Ambersons from a start labored under bad timing and worse luck. First a war, then the cuts, and finally an audience disposed toward anything but an Indianapolisfamily in decline near turn of a century. I'll footnote with more of these ads as I come across them, as nothing shows so vivid the struggle RKO and The Magnificent Ambersons faced.

UPDATE: 3/2/18 --- 7:20 PM --- Got an e-mail from "Griff" wherein he attached the ad below for the Los Angeles first-run of Ambersons. Thanks, Griff!