Library Collections: Document: Full Text


Flyer For Birthday Ball

Creator: n/a
Date: January 1936
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library


Page 1:

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PLEASE COOPERATE
With your local Chairman of the Committee for the
BIRTHDAY BALL FOR THE PRESIDENT

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And have as many advertisers as possible sponsor the various advertisements in "The Bulletin"

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Your cooperation will help make this the greatest party in the world and will help in the great fight against Infantile Paralysis.

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NEW YORK, Jan. 10 -- Daily newspapers all over the country have shown an exceptionally praiseworthy responsiveness to the cause of fighting infantile paralysis this year according to Col. Henry L. Doherty, Chairman of the National Committee for the Birthday Ball for the President, main source of funds for infantile paralysis in this country. Up to January 9th, 5,049 orders for individual mats have been received-an all-time record!

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An additional means of publicizing the Ball has been devised this year which is reminiscent of wartimes, when Liberty Loans, Red Cross, Smileage and Draft Campaigns were put over with the help of sponsored advertising. The National Committee in December planned a fourteen page newspaper, THE BULLETIN, embodying a series of appropriate advertisements, news stories and photographs on the Birthday Ball. THE BULLETIN was sent to daily newspapers, advertisers, local chairmen of the Birthday Ball and advertising men all over the country on Jan. 2. and Jan. 3, with a letter from Col. Carl Byoir, General Director of the National Committee.

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The advertisements were designed to urge attendance at the Ball in the name of local advertisers who paid for their insertion; the publicity stories and photographs to encourage it through the news columns of the papers. It was hoped that advertisers would be as glad to support such a cause as the newspapers; and since the newspapers had been so generous with their news and editorial columns in the past, it was considered perfectly fair to ask advertisers to share in the effort this year.

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Apparently the newspapers and the advertisers agree with the National Committee, for within a few days of mailing THE BULLETIN orders for 5,049 mats of advertisements and photographs poured into the offices of the National Committee. The mat manufacturers were astonished. Thinking in terms of orders by the scores or fifties, they were suddenly swamped with orders by the thousands.

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Newspapers were as quick to take advantage of the offer of mats of photographs concerning the 1936 Birthday Ball as they were to order the advertisements promoting it. A full page was devoted to these in THE BULLETIN, besides space in various other parts of the paper. Most popular picture was one titled "First Mother of America," showing Mrs. James Roosevelt, mother of the President, at last year's Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York; second favorite showed Howard Chandler Christy and his model, Miss Elise Ford, beside his new painting of the President for the Birthday Ball, to be used as a poster and cover for the New York Birthday Ball program; third was a splendid cartoon contributed by the noted cartoonist, Rollin Kirby. Many papers announced that they would use the whole page of photographs, as well as a page of Christy paintings editorially.

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Feature stories and illustrations of what to wear at the Ball, provided by Marshall Field and Co., Hart, Schaffner and Marx, John Wanamaker, John David and the editors of Esquire and Vogue magazines, have been republished by the newspapers and are also being reproduced in the advertising and window displays of large department stores and clothing stores from coast to coast. Beauticians have organized to cooperate under the direction of Chairman Sidney Gilbert, president of the Parker-Herbex Co., and advertisers in general have been organized by Chairman Colonel Ralph K. Strassman, Room 1509, 1250 6th Ave.,with 100 on his National Committee;

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The radio committee engaged in working for the success of the Birthday Ball has doubled the number of radio stations cooperating this year compared with last, and it is perhaps an indication of the possibilities inherent in cooperation between newspapers and radio that immediately after the nation-wide broadcast of the President's speech at the convening of Congress the demand for photographic and advertising mats increased very substantially.

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As a result of these varied efforts, all signs now point to an even greater success for the 1936 Birthday Ball than for the two preceding ones.

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Dr. B. W. Murphy, 106 North St., St. Joseph, Mo., President Society for American Flowers, has accepted the Chairmanship of the Florist Division, Birthday Ball to promote "What Flowers to wear to the Birthday Ball for the President," Jan. 30, with Mr. Max Schling, 765 Fifth Ave., New York, as Vice Chairman. Sub Chairmen will be appointed in every city and town in the United States to cooperate with newspapers and radio stations in both publicity and advertising during the two weeks prior to Jan. 30th.

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