Coloring Giant Ants!

Ask a sci-fi fan to name a most memorable aspect of Them! and they will mention the giant marauding ants, or an evocative opening scene with little Sandy Descher traumatized from her encounter with the monsters. Them! was a blue-ribbon exception to prevailing view of science-fiction as font for cheap thrilling, worthy at most of a child's attention. Them! has been researched, exhaustively so. There seemed little left to learn of its impact and influence, but wait ... what of how it was promoted to a public for which Them! was an altogether unknown quantity. A coloring contest to fan interest in giant ants? Well, why not? I came across this and other bally blitzes via search of 1954 newspapers here in North Wilkesboro, NC. Turns out Them! was quite the event for those of us still paying little more than a dime or a quarter to get into our Allen Theatre.  





What I found was possibly the biggest campaign any picture had in North Wilkesboro that year.  Drumbeat started three weeks in advance of the Allen's playdate. The venue seated 450 and had a balcony, but no stage. Our Journal-Patriot carried its first announcement of the coloring contest, and however readers regarded that, the prizes to be awarded were no laughing matter. RCA Victor televisions were a heady proposition in a community where few families even owned a set, runner-up radios and phonograph generating near as much excitement in households as well. I'm betting a lot of adults put crayon to paper toward helping Junior cop such goodies. As you can see by the "Coloring Contest Entry Blank", the idea was to imagine how the ants would look in color. We could wonder if any of those original entries survive today. The Allen unleashed the monsters on June 27, 1954, as Them! played a three-day engagement, this a maximum run for movies in our town, unless it was The Ten Commandments. Even when I going as a kid in the mid to late sixties, we almost never had anything stay longer, three to five program changes a week pretty much the norm back then. No doubt Them! clicked for the Allen, as it came on heels of Creature From The Black Lagoon (in 3-D), and was displaced by Dial M For Murder. The Allen was a bright light for movie entertainment in  June, 1954.
For those who always dreamed of becoming a Them fighter (just like the regular civilian defense wears!), here was opportunity, and would anyone recall Mrs. J.D. Campbell of Midville, Ohio? Is it possible that Mr. Campbell was a Warners exchange man in that area, or a starving Ohio exhibitor hoping to get better terms for upcoming WB releases? Mrs. Campbell certainly doesn’t look like the kind of patron who would enjoy a picture like Them!. In fact, she more resembles a sort who would try to prevent others from enjoying Them!. And public safety concerns do compel us to point out the hazards inherent in that proposed street bally. To wit, if those girls intend to walk shoulder-to-shoulder down city sidewalks, where does that leave their fellow pedestrians? Dangerously close to, if not in, the street, I should think. And finally, does anyone actually possess that Art Carney "novelty record"? I can’t imagine what a thing like that would sound like, but I’d sure like to hear it. If anyone has one, please enlighten us all!




Finally, Them! at the boxoffice. I’ve read often of how this was Warner’s biggest moneymaker in 1954. How it out-grossed big pictures like A Star Is Born, etc. Well, it’s true Them! was a hit, but it certainly wasn’t their biggest hit. Them! had a negative cost of $1.2 million, and earned $1.6 in domestic rentals. Foreign rentals were $890,000, and worldwide totaled $2.5 million, for a final profit of $685,000. That was exceptional for sci-fi product, but nowhere near what Dial M For Murder brought back --- or Drum Beat with Alan Ladd. Them! was more profitable than A Star Is Born, even though the musical had a considerably larger gross. An exorbitant negative cost, however, limited Star's profit to $164,000. Unqualified successes for that year were The High and The Mighty ($4.6 profit), and the Dragnet feature with Jack Webb ($3.3 to the good). Both of these ran rings around the ants, that no discredit to Them!, since legacy-wise, it seems to have emerged a clear winner.