Here are 16 wild PR stunts from the Silent Era and Old Hollywood:
1.
Harry Reichenbach was one of the most notorious press agents in the early days of Hollywood. To promote the 1918 film Tarzan of the Apes, he had an orangutan styled like a movie star in a glamorous evening gown and silk hat. The primate was brought to the lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel.
2.
For 1920’s The Revenge of Tarzan, Reichenbach’s ideas got even wilder! Posing as a musician named T. R. Zann, he checked himself into the Hotel Belleclaire in NYC. Claiming he wanted to put a Steinway piano in his room, he got a team of bellhops to help carry up a massive wooden crate. A short time later, he called room service with a strange request — 15 pounds of raw steak brought to his room.
Befuddled, the hotel manager called back to double-check they’d heard correctly. After receiving confirmation, the manager accompanied the server with the steak. In the room, they discovered not a grand piano, but a 450-pound lion!
Naturally, the employees rang up the house detective. Then, the cops were called in. Soon, the media showed up, too. The pieces fell into place — T.R. Zann stood for Tarzan, and his new movie was swinging into theaters soon!
3.
In 1920, Reichenbach told the New York Times that he once planned to have actor Clara Kimball Young kidnapped and held for ransom by Mexican bandits until she was “rescued by eight blonde cavalrymen.”
He said, “I went abroad for the Creel Bureau, doing exactly this same type of work. I spent $8,300 of my own money and got shot up with shrapnel. I could not get the money back, and so I tried to get it back in trade. I got the assurance that President Wilson would back me in this little bandit raid. Clara Kimball Young did not even know it was going to happen.”
4.
Sixty-eight years before Bugonia hosted a free early screening for people willing to shave their heads, Universal Pictures paid aspiring actor Patricia Smith $300 to have her head shaved in the middle of a San Francisco movie theater lobby to promote The Girl in the Kremlin. The movie has a famous scene where Natalie Daryll’s character’s head is forcibly shaved.
5.
When silent film star Florence Lawrence — aka the “first movie star” — made the jump from the Biograph Company to IMP, she already had a famous face, but audiences didn’t know her name. Suddenly, a rumor emerged that, while filming in NYC, she’d been hit and killed by either an automobile or a streetcar. In response, IMP famously placed an ad titled, “We Nail a Lie.”
The ad copy read, “The blackest and at the same time the silliest lie yet circulated by enemies of the ‘Imp’ was the story foisted on the public of St. Louis last week to the effect that Miss Lawrence (the ‘Imp’ girl, formerly known as the ‘Biograph’ girl) had been killed by a street car. It was a black lie because so cowardly. It was a silly lie because so easily disproved. Miss Lawrence was not even in a street car accident, is in the best of health, will continue to appear in ‘Imp’ films, and very shortly, some of the best work in her career is to be released. We now announce our next films…”
Over the years, many have speculated that IMP founder Carl Laemmle planted the rumors of Florence’s death, but nothing has ever been proven. However, he definitely capitalized on the attention. Several weeks after his ad, he actually took the actor to St. Louis so that the public could see for themselves that she was still kicking.
6.
To promote the 1947 rom-com, The Egg and I, press agent Jim Moran went to the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm and — with the memoir the movie was based on in hand — sat on an abandoned ostrich egg until it hatched 19 days, four hours, and 32 minutes later. He reportedly squatted in a specially designed wheelchair during the day and slept in an ostrich corral at night.
7.
The Ten Commandments director Cecil B. DeMille’s publicity stunt still has political implications today. In 1956, he learned that the Fraternal Order of Eagles was passing out copies of the Ten Commandments as a measure against juvenile delinquency. So, he convinced them to donate large stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments to be displayed outside government buildings and in public parks nationwide.
Film buff and historian Parker Riggs told Chron, “DeMille knew how to promote his films in a real bombastic way. But it wasn’t just about that. His enormous ego — he even narrated The Ten Commandments off-screen — was matched by his religious fervor. He was very, very religious. His biblical movies were sincere, something he believed in. They weren’t all about making money.”
8.
After reviewing 1943’s The Outlaw, Joe Breen, who enforced the Hays Code in Hollywood, ordered producer Howard Hughes to remove dozens of “unacceptable” shots of actor Jane Russell’s breasts, which he felt were “shockingly emphasized and, in almost every instance, are very substantially uncovered.” However, Howard ignored him and, playing into the controversy, hired a skywriter to write the movie’s title and then draw two circles with dots in the center, representing boobs.
He also released promotional posters depicting Jane lounging in a haystack, along with tag lines like “How Would You Like to Tussle With Russell?” and “Mean! Moody! Magnificent!”
9.
In 1958, Allied Artists promoted the horror movie Macabre with this chilling advertisement: “The producers of the film MACABRE undertake to pay the sum of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in the event of the death by fright of any member of the audience during the performance.”
And they really meant every word! Before taking their seats in the theater, moviegoers had to sign $1,000 life insurance policies. To really sell it, the theaters also had nurses and hearses on standby.
The idea was the brainchild of director William Castle, who made macabre entrances at the film’s premieres in a coffin or hearse. Film historian Catherine Clepper told the Smithsonian magazine, “Reportedly, he was pissed no one bothered to die, because it would’ve been great press. He was kind of a genius when it came to promotion, anticipating what would delight audiences or differentiate his product, which in many ways was an average, low budget horror-family film of that period.”
10.
Castle became well-known for his eccentric PR campaigns. For 1959’s The Tingler, he convinced theater owners to install electric buzzers on their seats, which would jolt the patrons at certain points in the film. He dubbed the technology “Percepto.” Before the movie started, viewers were greeted with a video message from Castle himself.
He said, “I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations, some of the physical reactions, which the actors on the screen feel, will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by some members of this audience. I say certain members because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate sensitive people will at times feel a strange tingling sensation. Others will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed; you could protect yourself. If at any times you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you can obtain immediate relief…”
He also planted a woman in the audience to fake hysterics and collapse at the moment the narrator told audiences that the titular monster had escaped into the very theater they were watching from.
11.
Castle’s 1961 thriller Homicidal included a “Fright Break” right before the climax. If moviegoers were too afraid to finish the movie, they could leave and stand in the lobby’s “Coward’s Corner” for a full refund.
12.
Pre-Psycho, this was the norm for movie theaters: Patrons could arrive at any time and take a seat midway through the movie, and if they missed part, they’d simply stay and watch it again. However, director Alfred Hitchcock went to great lengths to protect its many twists and turns, namely the first act twist where Janet Leigh — who was marketed as the star — is murdered. So, he banned moviegoers from coming in after the film started.
At first, the theaters didn’t want to comply with his demands. However, having a scheduled start time led to lines of waiting patrons buzzing with anticipation. The campaign was so successful that it changed the moviegoing experience into what we’re familiar with today.
13.
To promote Dracula’s Daughter, the 1936 horror movie about a female vampire who targets other women, Joe Weil, who worked for Universal’s publicity team, hired an actor to lie on a couch in a Pittsburgh storefront, pretending to be one of Countess Marya Zaleska’s victims. A curtain periodically opened and closed around her until the premiere, where she was “revived” onstage at the theater.
In addition, Universal published “birth announcements” from Dracula.
14.
To generate buzz for 1939’s Gone with the Wind before it was even filmed, producer David O. Selznick embarked on a casting search across the American South the find the perfect actor to play Scarlett O’Hara. On the Southern Talent Search, he and talent scout Katherine Brown met with debutantes, visited women’s colleges, and spoke with Junior League groups.
Amateur actors responded to newspaper ads. Some even showed up to the audition in period costumes. Eventually, however, they cast Vivien Leigh, a professional but mostly unknown actor from the UK.
15.
The 1915 film Trilby is about an evil mesmerist who hypnotizes and kidnaps a young model he’s obsessed with. After a screening, a girl was discovered still sitting stiffly in her seat. At the hospital, she lay in a coma for 12 hours before shouting, “Those eyes! Take them away.” The girl, it turns out, had been planted by our old friend, the press agent Harry Reichenbach.
The incident caused a lot of controversy in the press, and several prominent psychologists spoke about what happened to her. The risk paid off, as Trilby and Reichenbach profited handsomely.
16.
And finally, not every planned publicity stunt was actually made public. For the 1933 Mae West-led black comedy It Ain’t No Sin, Paramount’s publicity team came up with an idea that honestly sounds a little birdbrained! They trained 50 parrots to say the movie’s title. The plan was to install the birds in movie theaters to promote the film a week before its release, but the idea was scrapped when the title was changed to I’m No Angel at the last minute.
What’s the wildest modern movie promotion you can remember? Share it in the comments!
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