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Rare Weldon, Williams & Lick Theatre Stationery & Ticket Sample Collection – Fort Smith, Arkansas
Offered as one collection is an unusual group of original theater stationery, admission ticket, door-check and box-office samples produced by Weldon, Williams & Lick of Fort Smith, Arkansas.
The collection was retained together in its original printed sample envelope, boldly marked:
“SAMPLES OF THEATRE STATIONERY”
Weldon, Williams & Lick – Fort Smith, Ark.
The envelope instructs theater operators to preserve the samples for future reference and states that diagrams and samples could be sent to the company for pricing of coupons.
This is not simply a group of unrelated old theater tickets. It is a surviving commercial sample assortment intended to show theater and opera-house managers the different tickets, checks, stationery and box-office products available from the printer.
The assortment shown includes examples for numerous named theaters and venues, including:
- Brooks Theatre – Guthrie, Oklahoma — two Box Office Statement forms
- Columbia Theatre — reserved-seat ticket strip
- The Odeon – Memphis, Tennessee — admission ticket strip
- Big Beloit Fair — Grand Stand admission strip
- Lu-Lu Theatre – Butte, Montana — complimentary ticket
- Greenwall’s Opera House – Fort Worth, Texas — complimentary ticket
- Gentry Bros. admission ticket
- Grand Opera House – Warren, Ohio admission ticket
- Grand Opera House door check
- Sumter Opera House – Sumter, South Carolina door checks
- Exchange-ticket sample
The collection also contains printer’s samples and advertising for several different theater-management products, including:
- Coupon Book Strip Tickets
- Book Strip Tickets
- Complimentary Tickets
- Gallery Tickets
- Exchange Tickets
- Destructible Door Checks
- Hard Pass-Out checks
- Usher and Stage badges/checks
- Lithograph sticker advertising samples
- Additional theater ticket and stationery samples shown in the photographs
Several pieces are particularly interesting because the reverse sides contain period pricing and descriptions of how the ticket systems worked, including quantities, different colored cardboard stocks, waterproof “Tuff Check” tickets, stitched books and methods for distinguishing different theater sections.
The two large Brooks Theatre Box Office Statements are especially nice examples of the business side of early theater operation, providing spaces for ticket prices, receipts, company and house shares, expenses, treasurer information and other accounting.
The original sample envelope accompanies the collection and helps establish that these pieces were assembled together as salesman’s/manufacturer’s theater stationery samples.
A fascinating survivor for collectors of American theater history, opera houses, ticket ephemera, early printing, entertainment memorabilia, Arkansas advertising and historic commercial printing.
Everything pictured is included and will be sold together.
Please study the photographs carefully. They form an important part of the description and show the exact collection being offered.
