Kelly Burton
MHS Film Archivist
One of the more frequent visitors to the
Montana Historical Society’s moving image archives is Helena advertising
entrepreneur and filmmaker Robert Henkel. After selling ads for the Billings
Gazette for seven years, Henkel started his own company in 1959 under the name
of Sage Advertising. While Henkel worked (and continues to work) from Sage’s
headquarters in Helena, partner Jim Graff handled the Billings office. Sage had
immediate success with the creation of promotional materials for Yellowstone
National Park, a fact that is detailed in a July 5, 1987 issue of the Helena
Independent Record: “The account with the private concessionaire at Yellowstone
National Park has been Sage’s major success, a national ad account that ‘made’
Sage in the late 1950s and has stayed with them over the decades. In 1971, Sage
noticed that Yellowstone was peopled with tourists who ‘weren’t spending any
money there,’ who treated Yellowstone as a stopping-off point ‘to the rodeo and
the South Dakota snake pit.’ Sage convinced the park to increase its ad budget
by a third, reach visitors before they hit the park, and target their ads to a
more upscale tourist. Ads began to appear in ‘Sunset’ and ‘Better Homes &
Gardens’; the next year was a record-breaker.” Sage Advertising estimated that
Yellowstone visitation went up 20 percent the following year, and the “average
stay went from 1.7 to 2.4 days.”
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| from the Helena Independent Record, 5 July 1987 |
In addition to creating a wide range of
print materials for Yellowstone National Park, Sage Advertising also made
promotional films which served to highlight the various features and amenities
of the park. Sage Films soon became a prolific arm of the company in its own
right, with various employees – including Henkel and Graff – often handling the
production, direction, writing and photography of the films themselves. The printed
promotional materials for ”Yellowstone: A World Apart” describe the 1963 film
as “a wondrous tour through nature’s unspoiled domain” with highlights that
include “the great basins, bubbling mud pots, miniature volcanoes, geysers
(starring Old Faithful), begging bears with cuddly cubs, and the many sports
activities available.” Celebrated outdoor magazine ‘Field & Stream’ made
note of the 1967 Sage Films production “The White Face of Yellowstone”, calling
it “a pictorial winter tour into Yellowstone Park via snowmobile” that
“captures the smoky eruptions of Old Faithful, focuses in on the park’s
majestic wildlife, and its fantastic bubbling hot springs.” Sage also created
“Four Seasons of Yellowstone” for the park in 1970, which sought to “explore
the 4 delightful seasons of Yellowstone’s 2 million-acre sanctuary” and promote
year-round visitation to the park.
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| (collection MOV 0099) |
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| (collection MOV 0099) |
In addition to Yellowstone, Sage Films worked
with other customers throughout the region to create effective travelogues and
promotional films. The company was very prolific through the 1970s, and some of
the tiles from the Sage Advertising moving image collection (MOV 0099) include:
“Montana: Land of the Big Sky” (1971); “Escape to Montana’s Glacier Park”
(1972); “Montana: A Little Farther North” (1973); “Explore the Old West Trail
Country” (1973); ”Red Sunday: The Story of the Battle of Little Big Horn”
(1975); “Montana Grain Helps Feed a Hungry World” (1976); and “Old West Trail
Country: Your Land and Mine” (1977). Customers for these films included the
Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming Travel Divisions, the
Montana Bicentennial Administration, the North Dakota Bicentennial Commission, the
Montana State Advertising Department, Glacier Park, Inc., Montana Dakota
Utilities Co., United States Travel Service, Old West Trail Foundation,
Northwest Airlines, and the Montana Power Company, to name a few.
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| Sage Films promotional materials (MOV 0099 accession file) |
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| Sage Films promotional materials (MOV 0099 accession file) |
The 1987 article from the Helena
Independent Record also discusses the political work of Sage Advertising,
stating that “a large chunk of Sage’s reputation stems from its political track
record – only two general election losses since 1968 – the 1982 gambling
initiative and Don Allen’s unsuccessful bid to unseat U.S. Congressman Pat
Williams in 1986.” Noting that “every Montana governor for two decades has used
Sage,” Helena’s newspaper quotes Henkel as he describes Sage’s approach to the
regional political landscape: ‘We like to win, so we try not to pick candidates
we can’t work with. We can’t stop our compulsion to win. We’ve had clients who
were egotistical, aggressive, hard-to-work with, nearly impossible. But even
then we couldn’t stop ourselves from wanting them to win. We’re a success story
because our clients are a success.” Sage often created motion picture films for
their political clients, an excellent example of which are the ten “Forrest
Anderson: Democrat for Governor” commercials currently housed at the Historical
Society. These commercials were created for the Anderson campaign in 1968 by
Sage Films, and their airing on Montana television was followed by a victory
for the candidate later that year.
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| (MOV 0099) |
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| (MOV 0099) |
The Sage Advertising moving image
collection at the Montana Historical Society consists of 73 films and videos,
in addition to ephemera such as promotional materials and production
documentation. Seven films from this collection are available for viewing via
the MHS Moving Image Archive playlist on the Historical Society’s YouTube channel.
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| Sage Films production documentation (MOV 0099 accession file) |
