Joyce C.
Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards, Inc., lived the American
dream. Born Aug. 29, 1891, in tiny David City, Neb., Hall
overcame both poverty and a lack of a formal education to
become the architect of an industry, friend of two presidents
and a prime minister, patron of the arts, and recipient of
high honors from three nations.
Though J.C.
Hall became a wealthy man, profit was never foremost in his
thoughts. In his autobiography, When You Care Enough, Hall
wrote: “If a man goes into business with only the idea of
making a lot of money, chances are he won’t. But if he puts
service and quality first, the money will take care of
itself. Producing a first-class product that is a real need
is a much stronger motivation for success than getting rich.”
Hall never
lost his plain-spoken, common sense, man-of-the-plains touch,
despite being: Commander of the Order of the British Empire;
holder of the French Legion of Honor; winner of the Eisenhower
Medallion; first-name intimate of Winston Churchill, Dwight
Eisenhower and Harry Truman; winner of the first Emmy ever
awarded to a television sponsor; recipient of plaques, scrolls
and honorary degrees, and the Horatio Alger Award.
A Boy Named
Joyce
Joyce Hall
was the youngest son of George Nelson Hall and Nancy Dudley
Houston Hall. The family was poor. His parents also were
religious – a fact that led to the unlikely first name of
Joyce. As he recounted in his autobiography, Hall was born on
the day a Methodist bishop named Isaac W. Joyce happened to be
in David City.
The Hall
family moved to
Norfolk,
Neb.,
before the turn of the century. Young Joyce, after his
initial venture selling perfume to neighbors, clerked in his
brother’s bookstore after school.
High Hopes
and a Shoe Box of Post Cards
When he was
16, Joyce and his two older brothers, Rollie and William,
pooled their money and opened the Norfolk Post Card Company.
But the market for imported post cards was limited, and the
new business hung on by a thread.
In January
1910, at the age of 18, Joyce dropped out of high school over
the objections of his family, crammed two shoe boxes full of
postcards, and boarded a train for
Kansas City,
Mo.
At first, he called on drugstores, bookstores and gift shops.
As business picked up, he ventured into the outlands, to the
towns served by the railroads running in all directions from
the burgeoning Midwestern rail center.
Business
was promising enough that Rollie joined him the following
year. The young men opened a specialty store in downtown
Kansas City, dealing in post cards, gifts, books and
stationery. In the early days, Hall Brothers bought designs
created and manufactured elsewhere and sold them wholesale.
On Jan. 11,
1915 – five years and a day after Hall’s arrival in Kansas
City – his entire inventory was wiped out by fire. The
brothers floated a loan and bought an engraving firm that had
done work for them previously. Thus the stage was set for the
creation of the first original Hallmark designs.
In 1921,
William Hall, who had stayed in Norfolk to run the bookstore,
joined Joyce and Rollie in Kansas City, and in 1923, they
formed Hall Brothers, Inc., the predecessor of today’s
Hallmark.
The Midas
Touch
In his own
bailiwick, Hall had the Midas touch. Maybe it was intuition.
Maybe it was timing. But whatever it was, it worked.
In the
1920s he wanted to substitute the phrase, “A Hallmark Card,”
for “Hall Brothers Company” on the back of greeting cards.
“Everybody in the place was against it,” he said, but he made
the change.
Later, when
everybody told him advertising was a waste of money, he
advertised, and established Hallmark as the most recognizable
brand name in the industry.
He was
warned against sponsoring a television show. After he decided
to do it anyway, he was warned against sponsoring classics.
“Go for the mass audience,” he was told. Hall ignored that
advice, too. Instead of mass-appeal mediocrity, he insisted
on quality. He launched the “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which
after more than 50 years is television’s most honored and
enduring dramatic series. “I’d rather make 8 million good
impressions than 28 million bad ones,” he said.
“Mr. J.C.”
was Hallmark Cards for 56 years. “Good taste is good
business” was his creed. Until 1966, when he stepped aside as
chief executive officer in favor of his son, Donald J. Hall,
no Hallmark greeting card reached the marketplace without his
“O.K.J.C.” imprimatur.
Bent on
Quality
Hall never
totally retired. Not one to drop out of sight, he continued
as chairman of the board and kept a close watch on quality.
“I’m bent on quality,” he used to say. Whether buying or
selling, Hall appreciated and demanded value.
In
semi-retirement, he spent a part of each summer in Malibu,
Calif. But the rest of the year he put in a day’s work just
as he had done almost every day of his life since he began
selling perfume door-to-door at age 9.
The
Kansas City
Spirit
When Hall
moved to
Kansas City in 1910, he had no thought of founding a great
company or building a great fortune. He just thought
Kansas City would be a good place for a hard-working young man
to make a living. He liked the
Kansas City
spirit. In many ways, Hall was the embodiment of the Kansas
City spirit.
As chairman
of the board, no longer restricted by the day-to-day
responsibility of running the company, Hall kept a close watch
on
Crown
Center,
the privately financed city-within-a-city developed by
Hallmark adjacent to its international headquarters.
Land
development is an unusual venture for a greeting card
company. But Hall was an unusual man. The commercial decay
that had pervaded his urban neighborhood bothered him. No one
else stepped forward with a renewal plan, so he did. “I just
don’t like to sit around and wait for something to happen,” he
said. “It’s more fun making it happen.” And J.C. Hall made
things happen. Today, Crown Center is a bustling residential,
office, hotel and entertainment district that not only has
turned the tide of decline within its 85-acre boundaries, but
also has been the catalyst for development in adjoining
neighborhoods.
Joyce C.
Hall demanded excellence of himself and others, and he got
it. Yet he appraised himself as a man who had achieved
success primarily because he had worked harder than others.
“I figured I wasn’t as smart as some of the other fellows, so
I had to work twice as hard,” he said.
Mr. Hall
died
Oct. 29, 1982,
at the age of 91. Hall and his wife, Elizabeth, who were
married in 1921, had three children: Elizabeth Ann Reid,
Denton, Texas; Barbara Louise Marshall, Kansas City, Mo.; and
Donald Joyce Hall, Mission Hills, Kan., who is chairman of the
company his father founded. His grandson, Donald J. Hall,
Jr., is now president and CEO.
