From the infamous mind of Kroger Babb, we find this clip board which, as always, is dedicated to helping him sell theater owners on the idea of letting him rent out their theaters to him. The practice was known as “Roadshowing”, and Kroger was known as the King of the Roadshow and Mr. Salesmanship! His motto was “You gotta tell ’em to sell ’em” and it is repeated throughout his time in film.

It has been said that his movie “Mom and Dad” sold more tickets than the original release of Star Wars, three decades later. He took that film on the road for years to packed houses throughout America. Who said that? It was probably him. LOL

I hear it quoted frequently and he did live long enough to see Star Wars “A New Hope” appear in the theaters. I’ve never seen it attributed.

The hype he was able to create is palpable. There is a 3-Page spread, in his hometown paper, dedicated to this film. It is totally within reason that he personally is responsible for this spread. But that is why they call him Mr. Showmanship!

We see in this baby clipboard that it has a perpetual calendar for the years 1948-1952. It is big enough to handle a 5″x7″ notepad. Mom and Dad released in 1945 and Chasm of Spasms in 1947. So, the timing of this clip board makes perfect sense. He had enormous success with Mom and Dad and was still working to capitalize on that momentum with his new release. However, I must point out that despite the extensive research I’ve done on Kroger I’d never come across the name of this film.

I located this image on Newspapers.com and should note that there were more than 4,000 times in which his name appeared over the course of his career. This is an almost incomprehensible number of references to review.