FIRST - 'Bank Night' - Delta, CO
Posted by: Outspoken1
N 38° 44.442 W 108° 04.239
12S E 754605 N 4292077
The Egyptian Theater owner, Charles Yaeger, created 'Bank Night' to stimulate lagging theater attendance
Waymark Code: WM94EJ
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 06/27/2010
Views: 3
"The small-town cinema, Delta’s ornate Egyptian Theatre, had opened in 1928, festooned with hieroglyphic murals and busts of the pharaohs. But five years later, with the Great Depression in full swing, the Egyptian seemed about to go the way of King Tut. That’s when theater owner Charles Yaeger dreamed up his ingenious promotion: Bank Night. The winner, randomly selected from a week’s worth of entry forms, took home $30—a useful sum during hard times. Bank Night lured enough patrons (at 25 cents a ticket) to keep the Egyptian in business, and other struggling theaters quickly followed suit. By 1936, according to Time magazine, the practice had spread to 4,000 movie houses nationwide. “Bank Night has become an American institution,” marveled the Saturday Evening Post. “It has profoundly affected the social life of America.” (from (
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