Word: gibsons
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...same Fair that had flopped financially last year. This time it was managed, not by glorious, gardeniaed Director Grover Whalen, but by Manhattan Banker Harvey Dow Gibson. Installed by the bondholders (issues outstanding: $23,000,000) to reduce or wipe out the Whalen deficit, Harvey Gibson did not attempt to remake the fabulous panorama on Flushing Meadows. He simply changed its atmosphere, discarding the austere conception of a World of Tomorrow, promising in its stead "a welcome as sincere and friendly as that of the old-fashioned county fair." Chummy, folksy releases cascaded from the offices of Leo Casey...
...Gibson & Casey created Elmer (in the person of a Brooklyn actor), set him forth as a slightly paunchy, wide-eyed, folksy prototype of a supposedly average Fair-going U. S. citizen. Day before his Forty Fair opened, Harvey Gibson made no predictions. Said he, disparaging the importance of "mere numbers": "If everybody who comes to the Fair has a good time, we will be satisfied."* By that homey standard, Mr. Gibson's opener last week was a huge success...
Homiest touch: the float bearing Elmer in the Grand Parade got lost. Said Publicityman Casey, watching Elmer & attendants muddle down a sidestreet: "I admit it's corny, but I love it." Paid admissions (191,196) were 7,595 under the first-day Whalen total. More important to Messrs. Gibson & Casey was what their guests would have to tell millions of other U. S. Elmers about the Forty Fair: ¶ Room rates average lower than at the 1939 opening. The Fair advertised: 80,000 hotel rooms at $1.50 to $3; 170,000 between $3 and $5; 200,000 more...
...Foreign Exhibits, World War II notwithstanding, still make Mr. Gibson's show a World's Fair in fact. Total: 49 (last year, 58). Gone is Soviet Russia's palace (on its site an "American Common", where foreign societies...
...Banker Gibson figures that with a season draw of 40,000,000, bondholders w111 get back even money; an attendance equaling last year's 25,817,265 would give them 40? to 50? on the dollar...