Kroger Babb

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Howard W. "Kroger" Babb
Kroger Babb in an undated promotional photo.[1]
Born	30 December 1906 Lees Creek, Ohio
Died	28 January 1980 Palm Springs, California
Occupation	film producer
Spouse	Mildred A. Babb

Howard W. Babb (December 30, 1906 - January 28, 1980), popularly known as Kroger Babb, was an American film and television producer. His marketing techniques were similar to a travelling salesman's, with roots in the medicine show tradition. Self-described as "America's Fearless Young Showman,"^[2] he is best known for his presentation of the 1945 exploitation film Mom and Dad, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005.

Babb was involved in the production and marketing of many films and television shows, presenting each with his favorite marketing motto: "You gotta tell 'em to sell 'em."^[3] His films ranged from sexual education–style dramas to documentary films on foreign cultures intended to titillate audiences rather than to educate them, maximizing profits via marketing gimmicks.

Contents 1 History 2 Film promotion 3 Later films 4 Other ventures 5 Personal life 6 Works 6.1 As film producer 6.2 As film writer 6.3 As film distributor 6.4 Television 6.5 Stage 7 References 8 External link

[edit] History

Babb was born in Lees Creek (near Centerville), Ohio, in 1906. He earned the nickname "Kroger" either from his childhood job at the grocer of the same name^[4] or from his father's preference for B. H. Kroger coffee.^[5] Babb held a number of jobs during his youth, at one point gaining a mention in Ripley's Believe It Or Not for refereeing a record number of youth sports games.^[3] He started out with jobs in sportswriting and reporting at a local newspaper in his 20s, but first achieved success after his promotion to publicity manager while working for the Chakeres-Warners movie theaters, where he would create different kinds of stunts in an attempt to lure audiences.^[4] In one, he gave two bags of groceries to ticketholders in the theaters.^[3] These experiences led him to the exploitation film business.

In the early 1940s, Babb joined Cox and Underwood, a company that obtained the rights to poorly shot or unmarketable films with potentially controversial or shocking material. Companies such as this would often remove entire sections of the films they acquired and add material such as medical reels on which to focus promotion.^[2] Babb went on the road with a Cox and Underwood concoction titled Dust to Dust, a reworking of High School Girl with a childbirth scene added to the end. The profits from it prompted Cox and Underwood to retire from the business, leaving Babb to start his own company, Hygienic Productions.^[3] He opened it near his childhood home in Wilmington, Ohio, and hired booking agents and advance salespeople along with out-of-work actors and comedians to act as presenters of the repackaged films, along with new features.^[2]

[edit] Film promotion

Further information: Mom and Dad

Babb is best known for his work in presenting exploitation features. According to the Hollywood Reporter, his success came from picking topics that would be easily exploited, such as religion and sex. His expenses were estimated at 5% for selling, and his distribution overhead near 7%, resulting in some of the largest per-dollar returns in the film industry.^[6] His wife noted his success with the "exploitation" of films,^[7] a term many in the business would embrace.^[3]

Babb's biggest success with his new operation was Mom and Dad. The film was conceived and produced by Babb, who hired director William Beaudine to film it on a low budget over six days. Babb headed the promotion of this film following its premiere in early 1945, often going on the road with it himself.^[2]

The film tells the story of a young girl who falls for a pilot and after some sweet talk eventually has sex with him. As she receives letters from the now-deployed soldier, the girl requests "hygiene books" from her mother to help learn about what occurred, but her mother refuses to provide them on the grounds that the girl isn't married. The girl later learns that the pilot died in a crash, and tears up the letter she was writing to him, putting her head down as the film fades out. Following a pre-planned lecture and bookselling attempt, the film resumes with the girl learning of her pregnancy and falling into despair. Only after she receives advice from a teacher fired for teaching sex education is she able to confront her mother, who is blamed by the teacher for being among those "neglect[ing] the sacred duty of telling their children the real truth." The film then presents medical reels and charts, including graphic images of the female anatomy and a live birth. In some showings, another film was shown with Mom and Dad, containing images of syphilis and venereal disease. In many prints the story ends with stillbirth, in others it ends with the child born and put up for adoption. The film never uses the word "pregnant" or refers directly to the sexual relationship with the pilot, instead using terms such as going "all the way" and noting that the girl's clothes no longer fit.^[4]

The $62,000 production was presented via over 300 prints,^[8] and the presenter would stir up his own controversy by writing protest letters to local churches and newspapers in the weeks preceding the film's arrival, and fabricating letters from the mayors of nearby cities about young women who gained the courage to discuss similar predicaments after seeing the film.^[2]

The third highest grossing film of its decade,^[8] Mom and Dad was claimed by Babb to have made $63,000 for every $1,000 the original investors contributed,^[9] and the Los Angeles Times estimated that the film grossed anywhere between $40 million and $100 million.^[5] Its success spawned a number of imitations that eventually flooded the market, but it was still shown around the world decades later^[10] and ultimately was added to the National Film Registry in 2005.^[8]

The success of Mom and Dad was mostly due to Babb's marketing strategy of overwhelming a small town with ads and generating controversy. Eric Schaefer explains:

Acknowledging that his films were unknown quantities, Babb advocated a "100% saturation campaign." In his sample situation — The Deadwood Theater in Movie-hater, Missouri, with a potential audience base of twenty-four thousand — Babb suggested sending tabloid heralds to all seven thousand homes in the area at a cost of $196, spending $65 for newspaper ads, $50 on radio, plus an additional $65 for three hundred window cards, hand-out teaser cards, pennants, and posters. The total came to almost $400, or the same amount the theater owner would normally spend on advertising in the course of an entire month. Babb always claimed that with his formula the profit would outweigh the investment...^[2]

The film became so ubiquitous that Time said its presentation "left only the livestock unaware of the chance to learn the facts of life."^[8] Babb also made sure that each showing of the film followed a similar strategy: adults-only screenings segregated by gender, and live lectures by "Fearless Hygiene Commentator Elliot Forbes" in an intermission. At one time, hundreds of Elliot Forbeses would be giving a lecture at the same time in a variety of locations.^[2] (In some predominantly African-American areas, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens was hired to make appearances instead.^[4]) According to entertainer Card Mondor, an Elliot Forbes in the 1940s who later purchased the Australian and New Zealand rights for Mom and Dad, the Forbeses were "mostly local men (from Wilmington, Ohio) who were trained to give the lecture...[I]t was a cross-section of the male population, mostly clean-cut young guys. ...The whole concept would have never worked with a trashy look."^[11]

Following the showing, books relevant to the subject of the film were sold. For Mom and Dad, Modern Film Distributors, the film's distributor, sold over forty-five thousand copies of the books Man and Boy and Woman and Girl written by Babb's wife^[10], netting an estimated $31,000.^[2] According to Babb, these publications cost approximately eight cents to produce and were sold for $1 apiece. While Modern Film was able to sell forty-five thousand on its own, Babb estimates sales of 40 million, citing "IRS figures."^[10] This sort of companion selling would become common practice for Babb; with the religious film Prince of Peace, he would sell Bibles and other spiritual literature, and with his fidelity film Why Men Leave Home, books featuring beauty tips.^[2]

With other films, Babb would try different approaches. For She Shoulda Said "No!", an anti-marijuana film of the 1950s, Babb highlighted the sexual scenes and arranged "one-time-only" midnight showings, claiming that his company was working with the United States Treasury Department to release the film "in as many towns and cities as possible in the shortest possible length of time" as a public service.^[2] David F. Friedman, another successful exploitation filmmaker of the era, has attributed the term "one-time-only" to showings where the film's quality was so low that Babb wanted to cash in and move to his next stop as fast as possible.^[3]

As well as being at the forefront of the battles over censorship and the motion picture censorship system, the exploitation genre faced numerous challenges during the 1940s and 1950s.^[2] It was estimated that Babb was sued over 400 times just for Mom and Dad^[3] (Babb himself claimed 428^[5]). Often, Babb would use the supposed educational value of the films as a defense, also recommending it to theater owners; in his pressbook for Karamoja, he wrote that "When a stupid jerk tries to outsmart proven facts, he should be in an asylum, not a theater."^[2]

Despite the criticism that Babb underwent for Mom and Dad, in 1951 he received the first annual Sid Grauman Showmanship Award, presented by the Hollywood Rotary Club in honor of his accomplishments over the years.^[12]

[edit] Later films

Following the success of Mom and Dad, Babb renamed his company to Hallmark Productions, continuing the marketing approaches of Hygienic Productions while going beyond health and sexual education films. Babb would later set up a larger distribution company, named Hallmark's Big-6.^[13]

She Shoulda Said No was picked up by Babb around the same time that Robert Mitchum was arrested for marijuana use. The film was originally titled Wild Weed, but the original producer struggled to get it distributed. Babb was able to acquire the film's rights quite cheap, and quickly presented it as The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket, hoping that the title would draw audiences. When it failed to stir up much interest, Babb instead focused on the one scene of female nudity, using a photo of Leeds in a showgirl outfit, and renamed the film She Shoulda Said No, with taglines such as "How Bad Can a Good Girl Get...without losing her virtue or respect???" According to Friedman, Babb's midnight presentation of the film twice a week made more money than any other film being played at the same theater would earn over a full run; Friedman proceeded to use the film in his own roadshow double features.^[3]

Babb's associates agreed with his belief that "Nothing's hopeless if it's advertised right", stating that Babb "could take any piece of junk and sell it."^[5] In the 1950s, Babb would present a number of other films. One was a passion play filmed (in 1948 in Lawton, Oklahoma) so poorly that telephone poles could be seen behind the crucifix, and was described as "the only film that had to be dubbed from English to English."^[5] Babb recut and redubbed this, retitling it Prince of Peace; it was so successful that the New York Daily News would call it "the Miracle of Broadway."^[5]

Another film, Karamoja, was marketed as a shocking portrayal of a tribe from Uganda who wore "only the wind and live[d] on blood and beer."^[3] Scenes included "the bleeding of cattle and drinking of the warm blood, and self-mutilation as a form of ornamentation,"^[2] as well as a full-color circumcision scene.^[3] Karamoja proved less controversial than many of Babb's other films and grossed less.^[2]

Babb never repeated the overwhelming success of Mom and Dad, and he followed much of the exploitation industry in turning to burlesque features in an attempt to make more money. One notorious attempt was his acquisition of the American theatrical rights for Ingmar Bergman's Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika). About one third of the film was cut, and the remaining sixty-two minutes emphasized nudity by retaining a skinny-dipping scene; the result was titled Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl. Suggestive advertising art, including promotional postcards, portrayed the nude behind of Harriet Andersson.^[2]

Babb's final film would be his presentation of an Italian film of Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin. This version was described by Friedman as one of the most "unintentionally funny exploitation films ever made," filled with "second rate Italian actors who could barely speak English."^[14]

[edit] Other ventures

Babb talked of an "unrealized" project, Father Bingo, which he advertised in the BoxOffice magazine after the success of Mom and Dad as "An Expose of Gambling in the Parish Halls."^[15] He described it as a comedy about a corrupt pastor who ran a "controlled" bingo night at his parish, but with an anti-gambling message. Babb called it "the best 'snow-job' of my life," and it has been speculated that he never intended to make the film, despite the trade ads that appeared for years.^[3]

On the strength of his past success, in 1959 Babb joined John Miller's film production company, Miller-Consolidated Pictures, as vice president and general manager. Babb advocated the use of the hard-selling technique he had perfected as a presenter; according to an interview in BoxOffice, it was based on "selling the sizzle instead of the steak."^[16] Babb also wrote a column for BoxOffice at the same time, providing advice for selling motion pictures through personal anecdotes, recommending writing off expenses as tax deductions, and promoting the use of women's clubs to expand advertising and revenues cheaply; Babb noted that there were "over 30,000 women's clubs," and that "practically every women's club has a 16mm projector."^[16]

In 1963, Babb formed another distribution company. Studio 10,001, operating in Beverly Hills, California, used similar roadshow techniques to market television shows such as Ern Westmore's The Ern Westmore Show.^[17] The company claimed representation in Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.^[18] Babb also acted as a showman for hire, promoting other people's films when not working on his own. Among them was a nudie-cutie picture titled Kipling's Women, a burlesque-style peep show,^[3] and Five Minutes to Love, a reworking of a Rue McClanahan film originally titled The Rotten Apple.^[18]

Babb began creating promotion kits in an attempt to teach his craft to other would-be presenters. Marketing himself as "MR. PIHSNAMWOHS," ("showmanship" backwards), he advertised in BoxOffice.^[3] He also dabbled in other areas, writing tirades against pay television and creating a pyramid scheme titled "The Idea Factory."^[2] One of his schemes was the "Astounding Swedish Ice Cream Diet": overweight throughout his life, Babb claimed to have eaten ice cream three times a day yet lost one hundred pounds in forty-five days.^[3]

[edit] Personal life

Babb entered a common-law marriage with Mildred Horn in 1944.^[19] He met her during a showing of Dust to Dust in Indianapolis, where she was working as a movie critic. Her review called Dust to Dust a "cheap, mislabeled morality play,"^[20] but she and Babb struck up a conversation about the film. The two stayed together, Horn writing a number of Babb's screenplays, including Mom and Dad, and companion books.^[3]

In November of 1953, Babb was arrested on a drunk-driving charge after running a red traffic light and refusing a sobriety test. His $250 bail was continued, and he was not convicted,^[21] although the incident was widely covered in the press.^[22][23]

Babb had tax troubles in the years after his success with Mom and Dad. He suggested to the Press-Enterprise that his operation was so diffused that the $1 sales of the sexual education pamphlets became too difficult to track accurately.^[10] Babb eventually sold the rights to Mom and Dad and his stake in Modern Film Distributors to Erwin Joseph and Floyd Lewis, two former partners with Modern Film^[3] who would continue to showcase Mom and Dad across the United States.^[7]

Babb suffered from various ailments toward the end of his life, at one time suffering a stroke.^[5] He retired in 1977, at 70,^[24] and died on January 29, 1980, at 73, in Palm Springs, California, of a heart failure due to complications from diabetes. He left his wife, Mildred, a son, and five grandchildren.^[9] Babb is buried in Centerville, Ohio, with a stone inscription: "His many trips around and all over the world began in Centerville and end here in Lees Creek."^[25]

[edit] Works

Babb worked in various areas of the entertainment industry, in both traditional and exploitation genres. He claimed to have made twenty films,^[5] and produced for television,^[26] radio,^[27] and even the stage.^[28] This is an incomplete collection of works owing to the nature of the exploitation genre. The titles are as they were presented in their final form by Babb, with their previous titles noted in parentheses.^[29][30]

[edit] As film producer

• Dust to Dust (previously Child Bride) (1938)
• Mom and Dad (previously A Family Story) (1945)
• The Prince of Peace (previously The Lawton Story) (1949)
• One Too Many (previously Mixed-Up Women, Killer With a Label, The Important Story of Alcoholism) (1950)
• Why Men Leave Home (previously Secrets of Beauty) (1951)
• Halfway to Hell (1954)
• Walk the Walk (1970)

[edit] As film writer

• One Too Many

[edit] As film distributor

• She Shoulda Said No (previously Marijuana, the Devil's Weed, The Devil's Weed, Wild Weed, The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket) (1949)
• Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl (previously Sommaren med Monika) (1949)
• Delinquent Angels (1951)
• The Best is Yet to Come (1951)
• Halfway to Hell (1954)
• Karimoja (1954)
• Kipling's Women (1961)
• Kwaheri (1961)
• Five Minutes to Love (previously The Rotten Apple, also It Only Takes Five Minutes) (1963)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1970)

[edit] Television

• The Ern Westmore Show, producer (1953)
• Your Show of Shows, producer (1963)

[edit] Stage

• French Follies

[edit] References

[edit] External link

• Reason: "Kroger Babb's Roadshow," Joe Bob Briggs.