Let's All Go To The Lobby

Prior to the 1960s, a trip to your local Bijou lasted several hours, because along with the double feature there were cartoons, short subjects, coming attractions and a thrilling serial chapter. At intermission there was likely to be a short promo prompting the audience to visit the snack bar and spend money.

Snack bar ads were a unique art form and fascinating part of movie history. Many consider the Cadillac (Tucker Torpedo?) of snack bar ads to be "Lets All Go To The Lobby", animated in 1953 by the great Dave Fleischer for Filmack Studios of Chicago. Filmack Trailer Company began producing theatre ads, designed to inform, promote or advertise to motion picture audiences, as far back as 1919.

In a telephone interview, Robert Mack said that Filmack founder Irving Mack created the 37 second "Lobby" trailer with director Fleischer, staff animators and some singers brought in to perform the lyrics. In 2000, the Library of Congress deemed the Lobby ad "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. (Click here to go to the Filmack site and view the video.)

BTW, the derivation of "trailer" comes from the fact that originally these ads (the term originally refered to any kind of short promotional film, not just "coming attractions"), were designed to "trail' the feature, but theater owners discovered that people would leave the theater as soon as the main attraction was over. Predictably they began to play the "trailers" before the feature film.

Coca Cola, Orange Crush, Dr. Pepper, Eskimo Pie and candy manufacturers all produced snack bar ads promoting their own brands. PBS has informed us that Matinee at the Bijou cannot include snack bar ads with currently marketed products, as it would constitute product placement. (Unless, of course, that product were to become a sponsor of Matinee at the Bijou. Coca Cola, please take note...)

Bijou Bob does, however, have access to lots of terrific unbranded snack bar ads which will be featured on the series. And you can bet Matinee at the Bijou producers will be negotiating with Filmack to borrow their 35mm original Lets All Go To The Lobby camera negative when transferring this classic cinematic treasure to Hi Def.

Lou Gehrig: Baseball Star-Movie Cowboy

Who knew that Lou Gehrig, the great NY Yankee first baseman, moonlighted as a cowboy movie star shortly before his life was cut short by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Gehrig’s was a genuine American success story. From a family of poor German immigrants, he attended Columbia University, ironically on a football scholarship, and rose to prominence over a 15-season span and 2,130 consecutive games with the NY Yankees - setting several Major League and American League records along the way.

In 1939, the Yankees' Iron Man was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neurological disorder that would later become known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. July 4, 1939 was declared “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” at Yankee Stadium. That was the day Gehrig made his famous farewell to baseball speech, which included the line: “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Gary Cooper's rendition of Gehrig’s famous quote from The Pride of the Yankees was recently rated #38 on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 favorite movie lines. Most classic movie fans are familiar with Cooper’s 1942 portrayal of Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees, yet few know about a 1938 B-movie gem called Rawhide, starring Gehrig as himself, and produced a year prior to his diagnosis.

Matinee at the Bijou is proud to include Rawhide among the feature presentations that will be presented in HD during Matinee's first new season. The Rawhide plot has Gehrig retiring from baseball and moving out west with his sister (Evalyn Knapp) to take up ranching. Director Ray Taylor (who also directed our Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe serial) keeps the story moving at a lively pace, and costar Smith Ballew fits nicely into the role of a crooning cowboy-lawyer who talks Gehrig into refusing to sign up with the racketeering cattlemen's protective association.

One of many highlights occurs when Gehrig, in a barroom fight, arms himself with billiard balls and uses his baseball-honed throwing arm to rout the racketeers with some serious knockdown pitches.

Authentic American sports heroes worth admiring are thin on the ground these days, making a look back at Lou Gehrig’s personification of raw talent, integrity and humility all the more timely – and all the more ideally suited for the sequel series to Matinee at the Bijou.