After all this time, the Hallmark company has one card in particular that remains at the top of the list. It’s known as the “Pansy Card,” but not because you send it to people who are cowards. It depicts a pushcart full of the eponymous flowers, and it includes a note that says “To Let You Know I’m Thinking of You.”
It’s simple, it’s cute, and when it was added to the greeting card rotation in 1939 for Mother’s Day, it immediately became a hit. Since then, it’s remained a regular sales winner thanks to the simple and attractive art and the message that could fit into almost any situation. It’s still available even today, making it the card that has spent the most time on store shelves.
It All Started With a Dropout
The year was 1910. Joyce “J.C.” Hall had made his way through about as much high school life as he could handle and moved from Norfolk, Nebraska to Kansas City, Missouri. His plan was to sell wholesale postcards. Hall had a couple of brothers, named Rollie and William, who had previously tried to break into the postcard business in Nebraska, but they hadn’t had much luck.
Hall figured his chances would be better in the much bigger metropolitan area of Kansas City. He had a big city area to take advantage of, and there were also plenty of rail connections through the area, which would bring in more customers and allow Hall to travel to other areas for more sales. Remember, the first rule of business is location, location, location.
A Fiery Transition Period
Despite a good idea for a business and a great place to set up shop, the wholesale postcard business wasn’t doing as well as the brothers were hoping. That’s not to say business was terrible, though. It had steady growth and moderate sales up until 1915. At that point, a fire swept through their shop, destroying their entire inventory.
For most business owners at that point, it would have meant a death knell, but not for these three bros. They kept their eyes on the prize: success. The three took out a loan, bought an engraving company, and got right back to work. The engraving company meant they could come up with their own unique designs, allowing them to market exactly what they wanted at any time of the year.
Shifting Their Business Model
It’s not often that a huge fire ends up being the catalyst for a very big, very good change. There are some people out there who say any change can be a good one, but an immense fire that destroys your entire business is a hard thing to turn around. But turn it around the brothers Hall did. Their shift into custom greeting cards was a big hit.
Their postcard business was on the way out, and the brothers then came up with an idea that would turn their greeting card company into one of the biggest businesses in the world: custom-printed greeting cards for holidays such as Valentine’s Day. It was a move that a lot of people might have scoffed at – sending each other cards for holidays? But, these days, it seems impossible to imagine not seeing racks of cards every time you walk into the store.
Not Just Greeting Cards
The Hall brothers were great at innovating, it seems. Not only did they pave the way for the greeting card industry, but they were also instrumental in another common item that many of us use multiple times a year: wrapping paper. Before 1917, if you wanted to wrap a gift, you would use white, red, or green tissue paper (for Christmas gifts, at least). However, in 1917, the Hall brothers ran out of tissue paper.
Rollie Hall had a bright idea: sell customers pieces of French paper they used to line envelopes. The demand for this new, fancy way of wrapping presents ended up being so huge that the brothers were able to print their own patterned gift wrap. From then on, gift wrap has been a staple whenever somebody needed to wrap a present.
Taking Off With the War
The biggest help to the Hall brothers was, of all things, World War I. Of course, no one in the business expected to make big profits from the war – they were making greeting cards, after all – but it turned out to work in their favor. With so many men overseas and so many people wishing for the comforts of home, greeting cards were the perfect thing to send to those you loved.
Servicemen loved sending and receiving cards. One of the results was that men started becoming a much bigger percentage of the greeting card market. Finally, it allowed those who had trouble expressing their feelings a way to present something ready-made to do so. Less articulate and non-poetic people rejoice! They finally had a way to express their love.
The Name That We All Know
A “hallmark” was a stamp or press that goldsmiths of the days of yore used to make sure their work was recognizable. Seeing as it was becoming more and more popular and “Hall Brothers” was a little too provincial and small for such a growing business, it was time to give the business a new name.
J.C. Hall chose the name Hallmark because he’d always been a fan of those old hallmarks, and it was a great way to incorporate the family name. The new name started appearing on products in 1925, and three years later it was on every card that the company sold. However, the company name officially started “Hall Brothers Inc.” until 1954, when it was changed to simply Hallmark.
When Times Are Rough
When the Great Depression hit the country – the world – many businesses closed. Even those that didn’t shut down entirely had to let go endless workers, and few of them had jobs available for those who were looking. Incredibly, the Hall brothers refused to lay off any of their employees, and by the end of the Great Depression, the company had made it through with a remarkable lack of damage.
In fact, it was one of the few companies that actually had regular job openings during those tough times. By the late 1920s, the company was making things like die-cut cards in the shape of cars with wheels that actually spun – the kind of thing that made them a greeting card company that was hard to beat.
An International Organization
The Hall brothers had made it through their fledgling early years, a horrendous fire, a total market switch, and even the Great Depression, and now they were looking to expand beyond the borders of their native United States. Long before they were at the top of a media empire that made everything from crayons to postcards to movies, they acquired the Canadian William E. Coutts Company Ltd.
It was a big card maker for their neighbors to the north and was purchased as an affiliate of the company. It was their first of many international business ventures. In 1958, Hallmark would eventually bring the Coutts Company into the fold entirely, buying it completely. Until the nineties, it was known as Coutts Hallmark.
Joining Hands With the Mouse
Right now the Disney corporation has enough money and clout to do basically anything it wants, good or bad, but that wasn’t the case back in the thirties. Plus, back then you couldn’t get anything you wanted that had your favorite Disney character on it (ours is Phil from “Hercules.”)
In 1932, the Hall brothers were just starting to dabble in the market when they signed a deal with Walt Disney to create greeting cards that had some of his characters. In 1932 that would have meant Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pluto, maybe Goofy, and a few other minor characters. This was before Donald and Daisy Ducks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and it was even before the first feature film from the studio: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Plenty of Licensors
Disney wasn’t the only corporation or person to sign up with Hallmark. No doubt you’ve seen plenty of cards that have licensed names or images, but there is a huge collection. From Beatrix Potter (who wrote “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”) to the Ford Motor Company, almost anything under the sun can and will appear on a Hallmark product.
There’s the famous video game company Nintendo. There’s legendary cottagecore painter Thomas Kinkade. There’s Gothic director and visionary Tim Burton. There’s Rankin Bass, which made Christmas TV classics like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” There’s Dr. Seuss and Mattel, Nickelodeon, and The Hershey Company. The NBA, the NFL, and the NHL. Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, and of course the Walt Disney Company (including subsidiaries 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, and Marvel Comics) all have agreements.
Giving Customers a Look
It seems obvious to all of us now that we should be able to take a look at the greeting cards that we want to buy before we take them to the cash register, but everything is an innovation at some point. At some point in the thirties, the Hall brothers decided they would create racks on which to place the cards they had created.
Before that in their shop – and in every other shop of a similar kind at the time – the cards had been inside shop drawers that customers had to paw through like foraging beasts. Now they could simply take a look and give the racks a spin, like upright humans. The Hall brothers actually patented the development, too, calling it “eye-vision” which seems a bit of a redundant name if you ask us.
A Slogan That Means Something
After the company switched to the name Hallmark in 1928 – or at least called its greeting cards that name – it still had a long way to go before it became the company that we know and love today. For one, they had to come up with their slogan. Coined in 1944, the new slogan for the company was “When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best,” and it preceded the name change by about ten years.
By that time in the middle of World War II, it was already clear that Hallmark cards were the best of the bunch, and it was clear that sending one was a great thing to do for someone – at least, that’s what the marketing department was hoping people would think.
Working With NBC
In 1951, J.C. Hall himself sponsored a program for NBC. The partnership was a good one, and after that, the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” was born. It first aired in 1951, and it continues to this day, making it the longest-running prime-time series in the history of television. Starting in 1954 it broadcast in color, making it one of the first to do so – color was a rarity in the fifties.
At first, it was a direct descendant of the radio drama anthologies that Hallmark had previously sponsored. The premiere was Christmas Eve, 1951, on NBC, with the first opera written specifically for television: “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” It was hosted by the daughter of Winston Churchill. It began as the weekly half-hour show “Hallmark Television Playhouse.”
Growing the Program
In 1953, the series was renamed the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” It was the first time that a major corporation had developed a television program in order to promote its products, but you’re probably aware it wouldn’t be the last. The “Hallmark Hall of Fame” ended up being so successful that it was restaged by Hallmark several times during a period of fifteen years. The original opera was also restaged a number of times in other NBC television anthologies.
Hallmark moved its earlier radio program, the “Hallmark Playhouse” into the format, and started featuring stories of all kinds of pioneers in America. There were adaptations of classic works of Shakespeare such as “Hamlet,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” and “The Tempest.” There were also biographical subjects about people such as Florence Nightingale, Father Flanagan, and Joan of Arc.
Showing the Masses
It’s no surprise the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” became so popular. It was a way for everyday Americans to see classic pieces of theater from the comfort of their own homes. Not only did it have legendary options like Shakespeare, but there were also more contemporary offerings, such as “Harvey,” “Dial M for Murder,” and “Kiss Me, Kate.” Most of the time these were shown without the original cast, but they did show up for a few different plays.
Thus, the public also got to see famous names such as Richard Burton, Lynn Fontanne, Maurice Evans, and even Laurence Olivier in what were, at the time, extremely rare television appearances. 1955 saw the format being switched to a special series, showing four to eight times a year around the holidays in ninety-minute or two-hour lengths. In 1970, that frequency dropped to two or three times a year.
Cutting Down the Classics
Shakespeare fans out there know that trimming something that the bard wrote down to even two hours meant that a great deal was being left on the cutting-room floor. To get something to ninety minutes or shorter meant that these famous plays became almost unrecognizable to those who were students of the classics.
Eventually, NBC and Hallmark decided productions of Shakespeare were better left to those who had an interest in showing the classics for their own sake – National Education Television, which was the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS. Once Shakespeare was removed from the lineup, the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” started to offer original material such as “Aunt Mary” and “Thursday’s Child.” Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t time for a slate of other, shorter classics.
The Legends of Literature
The classics that the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” still had the air time to show was a long list. There was John Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Master of Ballantrae,” and even Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Oliver Twist,” and “A Christmas Carol.” If you’re wondering how in the world they managed to fit “A Tale of Two Cities” into two hours, well, they didn’t.
It ran in 1980, and it was the first (and, to date, one of only a few) productions to run three full hours. One of the installments from 1986, “Promise,” featured both James Garner and James Woods. That James duo won five Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Peabody award, a Humanitas Prize, and a Christopher Award. Quite the list!
The Present Day
The “Hallmark Hall of Fame” now has almost seventy seasons and a total of over two hundred and fifty episodes. It has had a huge stable of writers, directors, and composers, including famous names such as Jerry Goldsmith, Albert McCleery, and Gian Carlo Menotti. All-in-all, the show has won eighty-one Emmy Awards, dozens of Christopher and Peabody Awards, nine Golden Globes, and several Humanitas Prizes.
But remember, this is just from this one, single show – the famous “Hallmark Movies” that you might remember seeing during the Christmas season are something else entirely. Those come from the Hallmark Channel, which is owned by Hallmark Media – which formerly went by “Crown Media Holdings.” We’ll get to all that eventually, don’t you worry.
Making a Spot of Their Own
By the late 1960s, Hallmark had expanded to not just a historic seller of greeting cards and plenty of other traditional Christmas accouterments, but it had started to create its very own media empire. It needed more space, and so the company, led by current J.C.’s son Don Hall, started building the “Crown Center” on the land surrounding the Kansas City, Missouri Hallmark headquarters.
It was an early example of urban revitalization – the land surrounding the headquarters had been a blighted zone without much to offer people who lived nearby. Thanks to the work Hallmark put in, they turned eighty-five acres into a thriving retail, residential, office, and entertainment complex. The company still has its headquarters in that location to this day, though they also have locations in other areas of the world.
Everything Christmas in One Easy Place
Not content to just be the number-one makers of the cards that people sent each other during the Holiday season, in 1973 Hallmark began to manufacture Christmas ornaments. Their first collection included eighteen ornaments, six of which were glass ball ornaments. Each year, the Hallmark Keepsake Ornament collection is released, dated for each year, and available only for the year it is released.
This created something called the Keepsake Ornament Collector’s Club – which, in 1998, counted over two hundred and fifty thousand people in its ranks. There were also an estimated eleven million people who, whether part of the club or not, collected the ornaments. This led to one Clara Johnson Scroggins, a noted Christmas ornament authority, to write extensively about the Keepsake Ornaments. She also had one of the largest collections.
Holiday Cards for Everybody
There was no getting away from greeting cards for Hallmark, no matter what else they were up to. In the seventies, Hallmark started the Ambassador brand in order to meet the needs of smaller card departments and retailers in the mass market. Around the same time, they developed the Shoebox Greetings line of cards, which focused on more humorous cards. It was, at the time, the company’s largest product line introduction.
Eventually, the company also introduced cards that featured not just your traditional white middle American, such as the Mahogany line for African-American fans, as well as Jewish and Hispanic collections. While making sure that everyone has representation is a common practice today, this was something Hallmark was doing all the way back in the seventies.
Passing the Reins
J.C. Hall died in 1982 after building an immense empire of both media and Christmas joy. After his passing, his son Don Hall became the new chairman, and Irvine O. Hockaday Jr. was named president and CEO. At this point, Hallmark started to go on an acquisition tear that led to them adding plenty of big names and small ones to their business.
They were able to take a business that had begun with a couple of shoe boxes stuffed full of postcards into an empire that was beginning to corner the mailable market. And it wasn’t just things to stuff into envelopes that they were beginning to have a hand in. Soon enough this company would have its very own TV channel and a couple of other big brands in its corner.
Helping to Give the World Color
Nothing was going to stop the Hallmark company from owning anything and everything that helped to make the world a little cuter. In 1984, Hallmark bought Crayola, the company that claims to have 99% name awareness when it comes to American households. Crayola began as the Binney & Smith Company in 1885, which was originally an industrial pigment supply company.
Not long after, however, it shifted focus to art products for home and school use, such as chalk, crayons, colored pencils, markers, paints, modeling clay... You get the picture. Incredibly, the original name survived all the way up to 2007, at which point it switched to Crayola. When it added Crayola as a subsidiary, Hallmark began to expand its product line, adding colored pencils and washable markers.
The Famous Crayola Movies
Once Crayola became part of the Hallmark family, they knew they had something they could work with. Crayola worked alongside Alliance Atlantis, a Canadian media company, as well as the entertainment arm of Hallmark, in order to create a trio of direct-to-video adaptations of famous children’s novels. They were created under the name “Crayola Kids Adventures,” and they included... “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”?! That’s not a kids' novel! Nor is “The Trojan Horse.”
One might be able to say that “Tales of Gulliver’s Travels” could kinda be a kid’s book, but...boy, they are taking some liberties. They were all kid-friendly versions of their respective properties, which must have been a tall order to make a kid-friendly version of the “Iliad.” That piece of classic Greek literature has a LOT of death in it.
Let There Be Stores
In 1986, Hallmark came up with the Hallmark Gold Crown store program, a formalized way to bring together a network of informal and independently owned and operated retailers. This allowed stores to provide hallmark products with a support structure of sorts – a network. Eventually, the company expanded this network into a sort of reward for regular customers that gives them points for every dollar they spend – thirty dollars of spending gives you a dollar of rewards.
Members of this service also get free shipping, a free card every month, and exclusive savings – you know, the regular kind of things that a membership or fandom plan from a big company gives you. Hallmark is practically an American institution, so of course they have a way for people to enjoy their stuff at a reduced cost.
A Media Empire
Clearly, media was the Hallmark of the future. In 1991, the company created Hallmark Entertainment out of precursors that include the Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions, distribution agreements, cable systems, broadcast network agreements, and other elements. Trust us when we say it’s complicated and not all that interesting.
Eventually, Hallmark formed Crown Media Inc. in 1991 as a simple vehicle for investments into cable operations, with the goal of serving at least five hundred thousand customers in three geographic groups by the end of 1994. Things moved and changed, as they always do in such a volatile system, and then Hallmark formed a new division, Hallmark Entertainment, in 1994. It would be some time before we get the famous Hallmark movies. First, this section of the company had to get a spot on the airwaves.
Their Very Own Channel
We don’t know why Hallmark decided to make such a heavy move into the entertainment industry, but they did. After the success of their earlier ventures like “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” the company started to dabble in cable television offerings, though it took several years of time and work to get to where we are today. They didn’t just outright buy the Hallmark Channel – they had to work up to it.
A pair of religious broadcasters, American Christian Television System and Vision Interfaith Satellite Network, time-shared on a single satellite signal. They eventually merged, becoming the Faith & Values Channel, and then Odyssey Network in 1996. Finally, in 1998, Hallmark Entertainment (which was then, but is no longer, owned by Hallmark) and The Jim Henson Company together bought a major stake in the channel. Apparently, this stuff is really complicated.
A Spring of Joy
While the media side of Hallmark was making its first few steps toward what it is today, the card side of things was still growing. In 1999 it acquired DaySpring, a greeting card creator that is focused on the Christian market. It began in 1971 in California and grew quickly. In 1999 it joined the Hallmark family, at which point it was a full-service greeting card company that sold to places like Christian bookstores.
It was the largest producer of Christian greeting cards in the world by the nineties and had acquired a couple of smaller brands by the time it became part of Hallmark at the end of the millennium. It seems that if you can start a company that is made to send good feelings around the world, there’s a good chance you’ll get a call from Hallmark.
Joining the Digital Age and Expanding Products
Times were a-changing, and at the start of the new millennium Hallmark joined the internet with Hallmark.com. At first, it offered little more than news and information about the company, but soon the site started to offer e-cards – you know, those things that your aunt sent you for your tenth birthday on your first email address – and e-commerce options. Basically, being able to buy stuff from the website.
Slowly, more Hallmark products were added to mass channel retail stores, such as Expressions From Hallmark brand. They also introduced one of their largest product lines, the Hallmark Warm Wishes greeting card line, which started at just ninety-nine cents. You’re likely to find them at stores all around the country and probably overseas, too, just in case you wanted to send someone a friendly note.
The First Few Years
After Hallmark took control of the channel, they didn’t jump straight into original Christmas movies. For almost a decade, the channel ran “Hallmark Hall of Fame” films, motley family entertainment, and movies made by outside producers. The goal, as the original J.C. Hall wanted, was to edify and entertain. Hall was inspired by television’s educational opportunities – thus, original operas, Shakespeare plays, and other theater fare.
2001 was when the channel went into production as we might know it today, and the first piece of original television it had for us was called “The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells,” a period miniseries. Even more than twenty years ago, the network was aiming for a notable lack of edge, especially among cable networks, in order to bring in a broad, family demographic.
Early Offerings on a Young Channel
As the years progressed, a few standout options rose to some prominence on the Hallmark Channel. One example was the eleven-film series called “Love Comes Softly,” which was released between the years 2003 and 2011. They’re based on the novels of Canadian writer Janette Oke, and are religious frontier dramas set in the Wild West.
If you watch them, you’ll see now- (or then-) famous actors or actresses like January Jones or Katherine Heigl sitting in covered wagons, living hard lives that still turn out all right. Even during those nascent years, however, the channel was showing holiday fare – Hallmark had become associated with Christmas decades before. These kinds of movies will often feature a down-home, romanticized version of our present day. Like they stepped out of a Thomas Kinkade or a Normal Rockwell painting.
The Movie That Changed Everything
Of the early offerings on the channel, it was the 2006 film “The Christmas Card” that revealed the path that it was going to take. It was a surprisingly simple and effective love story between a soldier serving in Afghanistan and a mill owner’s daughter, set in the current day. The soldier returns home to try and find the woman who wrote his card. Mike Abbott became the channel’s C.E.O. in 2009 and pointed at the film as to what the channel should try to focus on.
He said that he loved greeting cards, and he knew that it was a good way to build the network’s brand. In addition, Abbott had been inspired by a two-minute Hallmark card commercial that had aired during the eighties, showing a music student racing to her lesson early to hide a Hallmark card inside the pages of her music book for her teacher to find.
Shifting to Christmas
Once Abbott stepped in to take the reins, there was a noticeable shift in what the network offered. There were a lot more holiday movies, especially those dealing with Christmas and the holidays in general. 2009 was the first year the channel had its now-famous Countdown to Christmas, a yearly yuletide cavalcade of movies that begins in October and doesn’t stop until sometime in January.
The very first movie in this collection is a little different from what you’ll see these days: “The National Tree,” which has a father-son team transport a Sitka Spruce across the country to Washington D.C. to present it to the White House. There is father-son bonding, some mishaps, some miscommunications, and plenty of feel-good moments to go around, even this early.
A Couple More Firsts
As we get closer to our current year, the things that the channel produces will become a little more cookie-cutter (heh) and formulaic, but there are still a couple of different things to find on the channel. In 2013, it debuted its first original scripted drama, called “Cedar Cove.” It was a romance set in the eponymous town starring Andie MacDowell, who also starred in “Groundhog Day,” as a small-town judge living on an island in Puget Sound. That sounds pretty darn Hallmark to us.
In 2014, the channel had the first exclusive “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie after sixty-three years on broadcast television. It was the movie “One Christmas Eve,” which had Anne Heche as a newly single mother trying to make the perfect holiday for her kids.
The First Hallmark Card Team-up
2014 wasn’t just the year when Hallmark’s signature series moved to its private network – it was also the first time that it officially partnered with the Hallmark cards division to produce something. Yes, incredibly it took almost fifteen years before these two worked together. For the channel’s life up to that point, there wasn’t much “Hallmark” collaboration, just like how the channel didn’t really do much kitschy Christmasy stuff for a while.
It was just doing its own thing. The cards and channel worked together to make “Northpole,” which starred Tiffani Thiessen from “Saved by the Bell” as a single mom who is looking for a dose of holiday magic for her ten-year-old son. As you can tell, the movies had been moving in a particular direction.
The Movie With the Right Formula
2014 was apparently a banner year for the Hallmark Channel way of doing things. Before the calendar flipped over to January, the channel had also shown a movie that would pretty much codify how the channel wanted to do things for the future: “Christmas Under Wraps” starring Candace Cameron Bure.
She plays a big-city doctor who travels to Garland, Alaska, which she correctly suspects is home to Santa’s workshop. Like, the real workshop. In the beginning, she’s angling for a prestigious Boston surgical fellowship, but by the end, she’s fallen in love and taken a job in Garland. It was a breakthrough for the company, and after that, the formula was set. The true Hallmark movie had finally been discovered.
The Way Hallmark Channel Did Things
With “Christmas Under Wraps” and movies like it, the Hallmark Channel understood that it also had everything it needed. From practically that moment on, the original movies on the channel were brimming with positivity, reassurance, sentimentality, and even some cozy salesmanship.
The Hallmark Channel already had a steady older audience, but they were able to bring in younger viewers thanks to bringing in younger actors like Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray and covering them in thick sweaters and Santa hats. Middle-aged viewers got to watch divorced heroines be wooed by major-league baseball players who teach their sons to catch. Doesn’t that just pull at your heartstrings? It does, don’t lie.
Movies That We All Recognize
Usually, it seems like if you’ve seen one Hallmark movie, you’ve seen them all. They’re centered around a big American holiday – Christmas, to no one’s surprise, gets the biggest cut of the pie, but there are plenty of Halloween and Thanksgiving movies, as well as Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, and more. They center on independent women with fun jobs like novelists and chocolatiers (Hey! Being a novelist is hard work!) and the male leads are baseball players, princes, and firemen.
The films have a nine-act structure: The meet-cute, the complications, the chance encounter, the challenge, the relationship warming up, the near-kiss, the misunderstanding, the reconciliation, and the happy ending. Those might not be the terms they use, but they’re pretty close. Watch closely – or not – and you’ll notice that pretty much every single movie follows that format.
The Right Kind of Audience
If you’re after mind-bending twists, surprising character revelations, or shocking moments...the Hallmark Channel isn’t where you should spend your TV time. For that reason, many people look down on these films, but we here believe they have a very special place. In a world that is frequently divided on party lines, where news pushes tragedies in order to get views, and there are arguments aplenty, Hallmark Movies at least show us some happy endings.
Sure, they’re schlocky and simple, but they are also, honestly, beloved by many. The Hallmark Channel is the number one cable network among women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four, and we bet many guys would admit to liking them as well. One actor from the channel, Cameron Mathison, has said that plenty of guys have said so.
A Nice Alternative
In some prime-time slots, the channel is number one in both households and total viewers. Millions of people watch their most famous collection, the countdown to Christmas – which runs every year from October to January since 2011. The number has been reaching toward the hundred million mark in the last five years or so, which has seen the channel’s popularity explode.
Some people will gladly tell you that they turn it on once the countdown begins and they will not turn it off until the tree has been put away for the year. It’s especially nice to have on inside hospitals and senior homes, which might otherwise play aggravating and stupid things like the news. Thanks to the easy storylines and happy endings, they actually might make some people feel good while watching their televisions. Imagine that.
Something You’re Used To
One of the reasons that every Hallmark Movie tends to feel, look, or proceed the same is to create a feeling of familiarity. You can turn the channel on and see couples baking cookies or having snowball fights or decorating the tree, and know that everything will be all right. Sure, there might be arguments, but everything is going to be patched up at the end, and there will almost certainly be a cute new romance to watch unfold at the same time.
Hallmark films have townspeople who care for one another, run small businesses that flourish, and have gingerbread bake-offs. Bill Abbott, the C.E.O. of Crown Media, said that it was a place to get away from the drudgery of everyday life and to show some happy people.
Of Course, There are Plenty of Products
It should come as no surprise that a lot of the Hallmark movies feature Hallmark products front and center. If you had a company that sold products and a company that made movies, you would get them to play nice, too. You’ll see Balsam Hill synthetic Christmas trees, Hallmark lights, and even ovens. It goes the other way, too.
The “Evergreen” movie series all begin with a shot of the illustrations that inspired them, which often feature a vintage red pickup truck in a snow-covered wonderland. While you can find the original set of images all over the place, you can also find a miniature of the movie series truck as a Hallmark Christmas decoration for a hefty forty bucks. Times have been good for the Hallmark company.
A Specific Way of Doing Things
If you’ve ever turned on a Hallmark movie while decorating the tree or something like that and wondered if the channel will ever show a movie with a little more edge, the answer is probably not – at least, not unless the channel goes through a change. Let’s take the movie “Tidings of Joy” as an example.
The movie itself wonders if the town of “Evergreen” is too good to be true. It’s almost a tongue-in-cheek critique of Hallmark movies themselves. The main female lead, Katie, is writing an exposé on the town, and at the end of Act Eight – the almost breakup, as it’s known – Ben, the male lead, finds the notes on her piece. Uh oh... how will this turn out?
It Turned Out Fine
Anybody who has seen more than one Hallmark movie will probably know how it turned out. Ben reads the notes with confused disbelief, but everything is cleared up at the end. The first time he went through the scene, actor Paul Greene, a regular on the channel, gave his reading of the notes a tint of anger.
Regular director McNamara called cut and told Greene that he had to take it down by about twenty percent. From the next take, we get the stunned, gentle disbelief of the final shot. The rule is a conflict can never seem like it’s so far gone that it can’t be resolved. In Hallmark movies, they never cross the line that means a relationship can’t be repaired.
Not Enough Christmas
Abbott and Michelle Vicary, who has been with Crown Media since the very beginning, read every script and watch every movie. Hey, sounds like a pretty good job, all things considered. Since the Christmas movies are shot in a mere fifteen days(!), they go with minimal takes and maximum efficiency. Viewers with sharp eyes might recognize similar or even identical sets in different movies.
They’re often filmed in Canada and use real, existing locations, not soundstages. The movies are all supposed to have a distinctive feel – the development teams are, in their own special way, brand ambassadors. Every scene has to have a holiday spirit, down to the decorations. Vicary has said they will sometimes call up a production after seeing the dailies and say “Not enough Christmas.”
Expanding the Strategy
The Hallmark way of doing things turned out to be a success, and the channel then decided there was more they could do. When it wasn’t showing Christmas movies, the channel introduced a morning show called “Home & Family,” which was shot in a free-standing house on the Universe lot. The show had originally been on a couple of network television channels, and it jumped to the Hallmark channel in 2012.
The new version of the show had a daily guest star that would be there for the entire episode, which would last anywhere from ninety minutes to close to two hours. Discussion of politics or current events was forbidden and the show was heavily censored. For instance, “breast” couldn’t be said, even during cooking segments.
The Sister Channel
Once again, the year 2014 was a strong one for the Hallmark brand. The company started a sister channel, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, which allowed the tone of films they made to expand a little bit. Still, you’d be likely to find movies like “Murder, She Baked: A Peach Cobbler Mystery.” That being said, in a different movie, the main heroine finds a human skull.
The movies would often result in a moment of cathartic, justified violence, like a woman knocking a murderer over the head with a piece of pottery. Regular Hallmark Channel films have basically no violence, so it can be a little surprising to fans. Even mere allusions to violence or more violent forms of entertainment can come off as strange.
Not in My Movie!
One odd example of a more violent activity in a Hallmark movie comes to us from the 2018 film “From Friend to Fiance.” At first, it’s any other film from the collection, but then the film shows us something shocking: a scene at a paintball range! Scandalous! The characters even wield paintball guns! An outrage! When asked about this strange element, Abbott said that Hallmark didn’t write the script for that movie, and it had been produced independently.
Not only that, but the movie managed to slip a four-letter word past the censors, at least at first. The word was “suck.” Abbott genuinely seemed to get angry when he got talking about the event. Hallmark movies get a lot of unnecessary bashing, but people are right when they say the movies are bleached.
Staying Away From Politics
Just as the world was becoming more divided and political, Hallmark movies began to get all politics out of their films completely. In fact, the company takes pains to remain apolitical. Abbott remarked that the only thing they try to promote is pet adoption, which they do unapologetically. The “Home & Family” set actually had a dedicated pet adoption area, and pet adoption is a plot point, or at least an element, in a lot of their movies.
One of these movies is the film “Road to Christmas,” written by common name Zac Hug. The movie had a pair of young men who own a pet adoption shelter together, which hinted that, while Hallmark was remaining unpolitical, they were still trying to portray the world as it was.
A New Kind of Hallmark
For a long time, there was neither hide nor hair of LGBT+ representation on anything that Hallmark made – whether it was because it simply wasn’t mainstream, or it wasn’t what you might call classically Christmas, or whatever else you can think of, it didn’t happen. With “Road to Christmas,” however, Abbott was asked if viewers had, indeed, seen a gay couple. Abbott confirmed the theory.
He also commented that he wanted to do it authentically – no camp gay characters here, just people who happen to be gay. He said that they weren’t going to do it just to do it. If you weren’t looking for them, you might not have even noticed anything about them. They’re not being called out – they’re just there.
An Authentic Vision
Believe it or not, the Hallmark Channel has always been a group that has focused on authenticity. While not every movie is perfectly realistic – just take a look at some of the Christmas movies – some offerings from the channel were very grounded. These include the 2014 (yet again) adaptations of the Janette Oke 1983 novel “When Calls the Heart,” which was converted into a series.
It focused on a couple of pioneer characters like a local widow played by Lori Loughlin, set in a western-Canadian mining town in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was pious and gentle – when people make mistakes or behave badly, they work to redeem themselves – they are not slain, but instead, they uncover a new leaf. Once it wasn’t so strange, but in the days of “The Walking Dead” or “Game of Thrones,” it felt fresh.
High in the Ratings
“When Calls the Heart” was a huge success. While it was playing, it aired on Sunday nights, and it regularly competed for the top spot on cable networks – this was, by the way, while “The Walking Dead” was also on the air. Abbott was always hoping that the Hallmark show would be able to beat the zombie show, but it doesn’t seem to have succeeded.
Superfans of the show, who call themselves “Hearties,” have an annual event they call a “family reunion” in Vancouver. They visit places from the show in tour buses. They make memes. They’re far gentler and a lot more Bible-focused than memes that fans of other shows make, but we guess they’re still memes even if they don’t make you feel bad about yourself.
A True Hallmark Tragedy
Thanks to her time as the star of the show, Lori Loughlin became a centerpiece of the entire channel. A cornerstone, some might say. Abbott called her accessible, kind, committed, and humble. Of course, then Loughlin was indicted in a highly publicized college admissions fraud scheme.
Loughlin pleaded not guilty, but two days later she was fired from “When Calls the Heart.” The show was also pulled off the air in the middle of the season, and they edited Loughlin out of the remaining episodes that had yet to be aired. When the show came back, it was revealed that Abigail’s character’s mother had fallen ill and Abigail had rushed off to tend to her.
Irony as She Is Cast
Ironically, one of the last big moments that Lori Loughlin’s character, Abigail, had on the show was when she reassured Elizabeth, a new mother, about parenthood. She told Elizabeth that a good mother always figures out what’s best for her child.
And then, in real life, Loughlin used her connections and money to keep her child from doing the hard work that would result in the child actually being ready for the real world. Is it irony or is it a sort of twisted coincidence? We’re not sure, and the line between the two gets a little murkier every day. Anyway, she shouldn’t have done that. If she did do it. Which she allegedly did.
The Christmas Con
While that sounds like a great title for a holiday heist movie (and we’d totally watch that), it’s actually a convention that Hallmark has put together. It happens every year, at different times, and in 2023 it was in early June, in Kansas City. It featured celebrities such as Erin Cahill, Danica McKellar, Andrew Walker, Paul Campbell, Melissa Joan Hart, Taylor Cole, and plenty more that you’re likely to recognize if you pay attention to the cast list of your favorite Hallmark movies.
The first Christmas Con was in November, in New Jersey, and it allowed fans to get autographs from their favorite Hallmark stars, a musical performance by Alicia Witt, and an ugly sweater contest that presented a grand prize of five hundred dollars for the ugliest sweater. We tried to find a picture of the winner, but no dice.
Surprisingly Relatable
Yes, Hallmark movies are some strange pieces of holiday fare, but there’s still something that draws people to them. They’re clearly artificial, with rote plot points and a sterilized view of daily life, but they do something good compared to a lot of other movies out there. The characters are down-to-earth and relatable.
The women aren’t damsels in distress, they’re people. People come together because they see the good in each other, not because of an army of attacking aliens or something like that. There are fewer ridiculous high jinks than comedy movies, and the people aren’t panicking about being single – they’re on a voyage of self-discovery. Rarely do leading ladies fall into big, strong arms anymore, even if it was practically a staple in years past.
Not Just a Fantasy
To those with a more cynical view of life, the regular Hallmark movie fare may seem out of reach and out of touch. However, many both inside and outside Hallmark itself believe that the characters behave with more maturity and realism than many other films you might find. The people have steady jobs, they’re parents – often single parents.
Don’t let anybody tell you raising kids as a single parent doesn’t require at least a little bit of maturity. Love abounds, but it’s not just love that is a drive for the characters – they’re often urged on by their goals just as much as “finding someone.” Even villains tend to be more focused on their goals than the actual people around them – like angling for a marriage more than for a partner.
Heavier Fare
Every once in a while, a Hallmark film is allowed to delve into some weightier topics, but it’s always with the same romantic vision that is used on so many other projects. For example, one film featured a subplot about medical debt. Another, the film “Two Turtle Doves,” had a grieving neuroscientist and widowed estate lawyer strike up a romance that not only involves turtle dove Christmas tree ornaments, but also frank and straightforward discussions about the people they’ve lost.
To those who might be struggling during a holiday season, finding someone to commiserate can be tough – few would expect something from the Hallmark Channel to let them know that they aren’t the only ones dealing with a problem. Nikki DeLoach, who played the grieving neuroscientist, has said that many people have approached her and told her “Two Turtle Doves” helped them work through their grief.
Doing Good in the Community
It’s not just the movies that Hallmark uses to try to bring people’s spirits up when times get tough. One of the other recurring themes in Hallmark movies is saving small businesses, and the company does what it can to make that theme a reality. During a special called “Project Christmas Joy,” which was shown in December of 2019, Hallmark donated homes to families in tornado-ravaged parts of Alabama.
The same year, the company threw a special Christmas event for the residents of David City, Nebraska – the original hometown of J.C. Hall. One reporter for the “New Yorker” magazine was shocked to see her own house as one of the central locations for the film “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane.” The stairs creaked just like she remembered them.
Follow the Leader
While it seems like the cozy dramas of the Hallmark Channel would only appeal to a small segment of the populace, it turns out that isn’t true at all. Plenty of people enjoy watching characters come together and get through problems without things crumbling around them. Other services started realizing just how nice these options could be for an audience looking for something simple and enjoyable.
Just open up your favorite streaming service, like Netflix, and you’ll find movies like “A Christmas Prince” and its sequels, “Christmas With a View,” “Christmas With You,” “Operation Christmas Drop,” “The Princess Switch,” and many more. Not all of them stick to the exact same formula, and Netflix allows them to do a little more, but the movies don’t stray too much from the formula.
A Great Place to Work
Actors who have worked for Hallmark compare it to the old studio system – steady work, decent pay, livable hours, and what they felt was a certain amount of care for them. Martin Cummins, who played the villainous mine owner Henry Gowen on “When Calls the Heart,” said that Hallmark’s film scheduling was unusually humane. They only shoot twelve hours a day.
Lisa Durupt, who made a name as a sidekick in almost twenty movies, says that you become part of a family. Michael Rady once felt a little ashamed of his work with Hallmark, but now says it’s his favorite part of his career. He readily admits he’d be happy working with them forever. When asked how he got involved with Hallmark, he shook his head and said that Hallmark finds you, not the other way around.
Not Just Christmas
In 2019, the Hallmark Channel made waves when it announced that it was going to produce a pair of holiday movies with Hanukkah themes. The first of them was “Holiday Date,” which has the male lead Joel (played by Matt Cohen) reveal to his date that he’s Jewish, and he also isn’t familiar with the standard Christmas traditions such as decorating a tree.
The family that has him over for the holidays, led by Brittany Bristow, who plays Brooke, takes this in stride and starts to incorporate latkes and a menorah into the festivities. Joel was originally just a friend who was there to pose as a boyfriend – a common occurrence in Hallmark movies – but you can probably figure out that the two eventually end up in a relationship for real.
Once a Family Business, Always a Family Business
Pretty much every business started before the Great Depression was a family affair, with brothers and fathers and sons and daughters and mothers building the products, making the sales, and keeping the shop running. Hallmark started that way and is, incredibly, still a private, family-owned business.
The current chairman of the board is Donald J. Hall, J.C. Hall’s son. His son, Donald Hall Jr., serves as an executive chairman. His brother, David E. Hall, serves as the executive vice chairman, but the current president and CEO of the company is an outsider by the name of Mike Perry. He might not be part of the Hall family, but there’s still plenty of familiar blood in the leadership of this company – it seems to have served them well.
The Artist Who Did It All
If you’ve ever seen a Hallmark card that has a cute little bear, a child, an angel, a kitten – something of that nature – you’ve probably seen the art of one Mary Hamilton. She’s been working with the company for over sixty years, and her simple, adorable designs have made her a rock star to the company. She was even called Hallmark’s “Cher,” for some reason.
According to Hamilton, however, she’s nothing special. She just paints with a feeling in mind. There’s no set pattern or formula to what she’s creating. After so much time, she’s apparently learned how to do it without even realizing how she’s doing it. That’s the work of a true master. Take a look at your next card – it might be signed “Mary.”
The Most Famous Card of Them All
After all this time, the Hallmark company has one card in particular that remains at the top of the list. It’s known as the “Pansy Card,” but not because you send it to people who are cowards. It depicts a pushcart full of the eponymous flowers, and it includes a note that says “To Let You Know I’m Thinking of You.”
It’s simple, it’s cute, and when it was added to the greeting card rotation in 1939 for Mother’s Day, it immediately became a hit. Since then, it’s remained a regular sales winner thanks to the simple and attractive art and the message that could fit into almost any situation. It’s still available even today, making it the card that has spent the most time on store shelves.
Rainbow Brite Is Because of Hallmark
If you grew up during the eighties, you might be familiar with the colorful character known as Rainbow Brite. She was an adventurer who resided in Rainbow Land, and she’s a creation of Hallmark designers. In an attempt to retake a young female audience from the ages of three to seven, they made Rainbow Brite into one of the country’s top children’s media icons.
It was also an attempt to counter rival greeting card company American Greeting’s success with its Strawberry Shortcake character. The colorful little gal got so popular that she had her very own animated TV series, an animated feature film with a theatrical release, and a line of toys produced by Mattel. She might not be around anymore, but she was big back in the day.
A Direct Competitor to Netflix
With all those original movies and even things like the “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” it seems like Hallmark could start their own streaming service! Well, they did. It was called Feeln, originally launched by Hallmark and producer Rob Fried all the way back in 2007! We’re pretty sure that’s even before Netflix!
It was Hallmark’s way of giving people an opportunity to watch their favorite Hallmark productions right on their computer, but it’s no longer in service. It wasn’t just Hallmark movies that you could see on it, either – there were options like “Look Who’s Talking,” “Hitch,” and “The Other Boleyn Girl” for a while. To have a chance to be on the service, you had to have zero nudity (sorry, HBO), no violence (sorry, HBO again), and zero profanity (sorry, Starz).
No Longer an Option
However, Feeln is no longer a service – head to the website and you’ll find a service for buying Instagram followers. Instead, Hallmark has Hallmark Movies Now, a more updated and traditional streaming service that has everything Hallmark has ever made from the channel. You can find your favorite Christmas movies, drama, period pieces, and even search for your favorite hunks of Hallmark.
The service doesn’t currently seem to offer anything from their “Hallmark Hall of Fame” episodes, but there are still tons of swoon-worthy romantic films, family-friendly mysteries, authentic pioneer stories, and oodles of movies starring Lacey Chabert. We aren’t complaining. The switch from Feeln to Hallmark Movies Now happened in October of 2017, and it makes perfect sense – branding is important, and everyone else was making their own service, so why not Hallmark?
The Huge Photo Collection
Hallmark has been creating art since before the First World War, but it’s also been trying to collect and exhibit it for others to see. Starting in 1949, the company has been collecting art to display to people, but 1964 was when it really focused on showing off a collection. It started acquiring famous and unknown photographs for a collection that would eventually grow so large it would acquire a legendary status.
It had a slow start, picking up snapshots here or there, but in 1979 they actually hired a curator to care for the collection. His name was Keith F. Davis, and his official title is the Fine Art Program director at Hallmark Cards Inc. After that point, the company went on to collect a grand total of sixty-five hundred photographs that cover the span of American history from the earliest pics – starting all the way back in 1839.
Giving It All Away
What does a company like Hallmark do after they have so many photographs? Why, donated them to the Kansas City Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, of course! The company made the trade in 2006, at which point the collection had nearly seven thousand pieces of art from over nine hundred photographers.
From early daguerreotypes to photographs from famous photographers like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Harry Callahan, and Alfred Stieglitz, the collection was massive and covered almost every area of life from as far back as the very art form itself. It at least had a little bit of everything, and the collection was estimated to be worth sixty-five million dollars. For whatever reason, it gave it all to a local museum, making that museum one of the world’s foremost centers of photographic history.
Something for the Kids
Not content with only creating greeting cards, movies, and Christmas ornaments, Hallmark is always branching out into other areas. Some of their more innovative products are things like Recordable Storybooks, which would allow people to find cute books that they could record reading and send to others. There are some for grandchildren, kids, general thankfulness, and plenty of other options.
The company has also started offering itty bitty plush characters, a line of small dolls that are available in all sorts of characters, from generic cute to all sorts of brands that we all recognize, like the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," "Sonic the Hedgehog," and even stuff like “Friends” and "The Peanuts." The website calls them shared connections to treasure between grandparents, parents, and children.
Always Making Connections
It seems there’s no end to the things that Hallmark has a hand in. Hallmark Business Connections, formerly known as Hallmark Business Expressions, is a section of the Hallmark Cards company that sells greeting cards to businesses – in fact, they create custom greeting cards. It launched in 2005. Businesses are able to create custom cards for their next deal, meeting, or employee lunch. Or for products, we guess.
This division of Hallmark has also created a line of environmentally-friendly holiday business greeting cards called the Green Collection. Each card is printed on sheets of fifty percent sugar cane pulp and fifty percent recycled paper. It honestly makes perfect sense for a company like Hallmark to be angled toward the environmentally-friendly market. They seem like that kind of good org.
Business Cards that Benefit Charities
In October of 2008, Hallmark Business Connections also launched a line of business holiday cards that will automatically benefit one of five different charities – or all five of them at once.
One of them is the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which provides voluntary after-school programs for kids around the nation. Another is Feeding America, which is a nationwide network of more than two hundred food banks that work to feed more than forty-six million people.
Then there are March of Dimes, which works to improve the health of mothers and babies (and was originally founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat polio); The Salvation Army, an organization that seeks to bring aid to the poor, destitute, and hungry in 133 countries; and AmeriCares, which is a global organization that responds to times of poverty, disaster, or crisis.
The Biggest Hallmark Store
So if you’re a big fan of everything Hallmark, where is the best place to get it? You might think online is a good option, but if you’re looking for something even more amazing, it’s time to go to Kansas City, Missouri. Found near the headquarters of Hallmark Inc., Halls is a full department store in downtown Kansas City. You’ll of course be able to find the normal things like cards, but there is a great deal more that you can get while you’re there, too.
You can find stuff like clothes, makeup, jewelry, shoes, a bridal registry, corporate gift services, and even custom tailoring. We’re going to hazard a guess that there are tons of branded products you can pick up, just in case you don’t have enough Hallmark in your life.
The History of the Store
The Halls department store actually started more than a hundred years ago. None other than Joyce C. Halls founded it in 1916 as a companion to the company that he had founded three years prior to that time. The store began as a simple showcase in the lobby of the downtown Kansas City’s Gordon and Koppel building. By 1916, Halls had moved the store to the fashionable “petticoat lane” and offered more options, including an array of high-quality gift items.
The store stayed put until 1950 when it was shifted to Grand Avenue, where it had the space to further develop its local reputation as a premium specialty store, as well as add a whole lot more product options. In 1965, the store moved to the Country Club Plaza, where it had fifty-five thousand square feet and an entire city block to sprawl.
Creating an Amazing Shopping Experience
After that latest move, the store was able to create something amazing for people who stopped in to shop. Not only was there a sprawling merchandise selection, but the interior and exterior buildings had been made to some of the highest standards of department shopping. These include incredible accessories such as lapis lazuli patterns inlaid in the floors and elaborate Baccarat crystal chandeliers.
The entire building has details that are complementary to the district it resides in, which has an overall Spanish or Moorish architectural style. By 1973, plans were already in development for the department store to become part of the Crown Center. Construction on the huge headquarters area began in 1967, and eventually Halls Crown Center replaced the original downtown Halls with a huge, three-story, one hundred thousand square-foot location.
It Really Is a Place You Should Try to Visit
While the store functioned solely as an immense department store until 2011, it then started to add some extra attractions. At that time, the first and second floors were converted into an aquarium from Sea Life Centres and a Legoland Discovery Centre, in a combined project that cost an estimated thirty million dollars. Apparently fish and Legos cost a lot of money.
As you can imagine, this displaced quite a bit of product that had been sold in the building – the men’s department and the Hallmark Cards locations that used to be in those places were relocated to the Crown Center Shops, while the women’s department that had dominated the third floor remained in place. We don’t think it’s unfair to say that women have the highest market share when it comes to Hallmark.
Making Things a Little Smaller
The Halls department store continued in this way until 2020 when the store announced that they would be remodeling and downsizing in early 2021. Around twelve thousand feet was closed off from the store’s original footprint. The full home goods and cosmetics departments were removed from the store, and the jewelry department was significantly shrunk.
The H bar cafe, which had kept employees and shoppers fed and watered, was closed. Halls said that changing customer preferences was the main reason for so many big changes. The resized store was reopened in March of 2021. Despite all the changes, big and small, it’s a little amazing that a store that started more than a hundred years ago is still around today.
The Hallmark School Store
There is one single Hallmark School Store in the United States. It’s found at Alvirne High School, in Hudson, New Hampshire. It’s known as the “Bronco Barn,” (after the name of the school’s mascot) and it not only sells food and beverages and other items that are traditional for a school store, but it also has things like Hallmark cards and other products available.
The store is run by students from the Marketing I and Marketing II classes and is open to students during the day and after school. As to why the school has the Hallmark store, and why it’s the only one in the country, there is little information to be had about the connection. Most likely, it’s something that was started decades ago, and neither side has wanted to end the relationship yet.
The Company That Means Christmas
Joyce C. Halls started with little more than an entrepreneurial spirit and a couple of boxes of postcards, but somehow he made one of the largest privately-owned businesses in the world in mere decades. While Halls passed away in the eighties, he was able to see his company create stage plays and operas, spread around the globe, and help people.
He’d probably be pleased to see where the company has gone since he passed on, with its uplifting movies and a desire to spread a healthy dose of Christmas cheer. Hallmark is a household name by now, whether or not the holidays are closing in on you. From greeting cards to romantic movies to all kinds of gifts, it seems like there’s nothing that this company can’t excel at – but it took quite a while to get to that point.