{"id":661,"date":"2007-04-02T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=661"},"modified":"2018-11-18T22:57:28","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T03:57:28","slug":"mr-blandings-goes-to-toledo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/02\/mr-blandings-goes-to-toledo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Blandings Goes To Toledo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hollywood has always been about ballyhoo, sometimes hyping its films through outlandish promotions designed to catch a moviegoers imagination enough to get them down to the local cinema and placing their cash into the boxoffice attendant&#8217;s hands. (And it still is going on today, as evidenced by New York City&#8217;s upcoming <strong>Spider-Man<\/strong> Week, which coincides with the release of the next installment of the superhero franchise on May 4th.)<\/p>\n<p>When it came time for producer David O. Selznick to begin publicity for his new comedy <strong>Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House<\/strong> in 1948, he decided he needed something big to call attention to the film. Why he didn&#8217;t feel that names of stars Cary Grant and Myrna Loy on theatre marquees wasn&#8217;t enough to bring folks in is unknown. Suffice it to say that Selznick decided to capitalize on the post World War II explosion of suburban communities &#8211; which not-so-coincidentally also serves as the backfrop for the film &#8211; in the grandiose fashion of building 73 replicas of the home featured in the film aropund the country to be raffled off to theatre patrons.<\/p>\n<p>Homes were built across the country- from Bakersfield, California to Worchester, Massachuesttes, from East Natick, New Jersey to Portland Oregon.<\/p>\n<p>And one was built in Toldeo, Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend, The <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.toledoblade.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20070401\/ART09\/70331021\/-1\/FRONTPAGE\">Toldeo Blade<\/a><\/em> published an excellent article on the history of Selznick&#8217;s <strong>Mr. Blandings<\/strong> promotion including how the film&#8217;s art director, a former architect, had to modify the plans for a film set into a fully useable home as well as the history of the specific prize home in the Toledo suburb of Ottawa Hills.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great piece of writing and well worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">Hollywood has always been about ballyhoo, sometimes hyping its films through outlandish promotions designed to catch a moviegoers imagination enough to get them down to the local cinema and placing their cash into the boxoffice <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/02\/mr-blandings-goes-to-toledo\/\" title=\"Mr. Blandings Goes To Toledo\">[click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[450,83,7857,448,449],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-cary-grant","8":"tag-classic-films","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-mr-blanding-builds-his-dream-house","11":"tag-myrna-loy"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[2],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}