Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Old Whitey where are you?


Scan10672, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 9/03/2008 06:21:00 AM

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was a day when all the shows would advertise in this manner each spring.

"The Billboard," let us not forget, started as a publication for billposters.

03 September, 2008 09:10
Anonymous said...

Some of the "Billers Wanted" or "Biller Available" ads were quite humorous.

One year they gave the Beatty car to Art Bitters. Art was always nice to me but I guess he wasn't much of a car manager. Paul Campion left in midseason and then ran an ad in Billboard saying, "Just closed with Arthur E Bitters and his comical clowns- if you want a biller who puts paper up and doesn't Charlie it by the ton, contact me- Paul Campion."

Once after Johnny Fulghum had left the car, Kitzman ran an ad, "Wanted a biller who doesn't spend half his time making the Post Office and the other half writing circus fans."

And when I left the Cristiani advance to go with Beatty-Cole, Elmer Kauffman ran this ad: "Wanted- a Main Street Lithographer who can still take orders after accumulating a few hundred dollars."

03 September, 2008 10:18
Anonymous said...

pardon my ignorence, what is a litoghrapher and what is an advertiser?

Biller is billposter if I am correct.

Were there an abundence of these men or was there an abundence of less than qualifyed men?

Very interesting information.

03 September, 2008 10:28
B.E.Trumble said...

And today who wouldn't benefit from even three or four of those billposters.

03 September, 2008 13:24
Anonymous said...

On the advance (which we called "the car" as long as there were real advance crews) we used the terms as follows:

Biller is generic and means everyone who puts up paper whether in windows or on walls and barns.

A Lithographer is a biller who carries a hod of smaller paper, generally nothing bigger than a one-sheet, and a pair of sticks, and puts these bills in store windows and if he's lucky in the occasional empty store where he can get a lot of posters up. The verb "to lithograph" means the act of doing what I just explained.

Billposter is used by most people as meaning all billers but on the advance we mean the biller who posts (by which we mean "pastes") larger bills- from 3-sheets up to whatever he has, which might be 20-sheets or even larger, on outdoor surfaces like walls and barns.

Advertiser is a term I never heard on the advance. I wonder if it is used here to refer to what was also called a "programmer" being one who passed out couriers or heralds from a pushcart.

By the way we used the term "lithograph" to describe a size rather than a printing process. Anything small enough for windows was considered a lithograph even if printed by letterpress. And to complicate things further we did NOT call large posters "lithographs" even if they were printed by lithography. I recently saw an article that said "poster" was never used on the advance. I don't know where the writer got his info as I heard the word everyday.

As far as the abundance of qualified or unqualified billers, I suppose there have always been every grade and there was a place for the even weaker ones as the "slough" parts of town had to be billed too.

There is also a verb "to circus" which refers to mixing the various styles of lithographs. Naturally the paper comes from the printers in boxes or bundles of matching designs- like a box of clowns and a box of tigers and a box of elephants. Now you don't want a guy going down the street putting the same poster in every window, so on Sundays the crew would go through the boxes and thoroughly mix them so that when they were dated and made up into hods every man would have an assortment of designs or "images" as the youger folk say.

03 September, 2008 14:49
henry edgar said...

dave -- enjoyed your comments. i never knew art bitters ran a bill car. it's still hard for me to believe the way shows cut back on the billing, rather than train new people while there were still people like you around who could have trained some new people. i know billing would be much more difficult today, especially in the larger markets, but i think a few people on a real bill car could work miracles in the smaller towns where you still have independent businesses that are not part of a large mall. putting posters in an envelope and mailing them to a sponsor is not billing, nor is putting up a tiny card offering discount tickets. with all the other problems shows of all sizes are facing, they might consider beefing up the advance to at least let people know there's a circus on its way. i can't tell you how many shows of all sizes i have missed seeing simply because there was no paper or press and i didn't know they were in town. i was always told that when business was off, the best way to fix it was increase the advance. who would have ever expected the bill car to disappear?

03 September, 2008 18:47
Anonymous said...

Once when Glen Jarmes told Kitzman that business was off and to let one man go, Kitz replied, "When business was off Ben Davenport always had me ADD men!"

Art just ran the car one year and they hired Steve Kuzmicz to take it over. After that Art just contracted press and it was said kicked back to Mr King every week to have the job.

Art's real heyday was when he headed the Hormel Girls.

03 September, 2008 19:23
henry edgar said...

dave -- in my memory, i thought the add people in bad times line was atrributed to davenport, but i wasn't sure, and you confirmed it. also good to know about the hormel girls. i knew there had to be something bitters might have done well. the bill car was something new but before i went on the road, i had heard bitters was not a great press agent and i later discovered that to be true. i also heard the rumors about sending money to mr king.

03 September, 2008 21:06
Anonymous said...

Henry: Art's Hormel Girls days were back in the forties and apparently the show prospered with him out front.

Johnny Fulghum loved to tease Bitters. Art carried a wide-brimmed hat back on the sun deck of his car but he never was seen wearing it. Johnny used to say, "Art, did Zack Terrell give you that hat? Well, why don't you wear it?"

Johnny also was aware that in cold weather Art wore "long johns" so he used to call him "Lord Underwear."

I heard Mr King tell Steve to make Art carry a hod of paper after he'd made the newspapers but in practice he rarely did.

Boy, you sure used to meet characters on the road in those days.

03 September, 2008 23:27

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)