Howard W. Babb was an American film and television producer and showman. He is best known for his presentation of the 1945 exploitation film Mom and Dad, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005. He earned the nickname ‘Kroger’ either from his childhood job at the grocer of the same name or from his father’s preference for B. H. Kroger coffee.
About Kroger Babb in brief
Howard W. Babb was an American film and television producer and showman. His marketing techniques were similar to a travelling salesman’s, with roots in the medicine-show tradition. He is best known for his presentation of the 1945 exploitation film Mom and Dad, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005. His films ranged from sex education-style dramas to “documentaries” on foreign cultures, intended to titillate audiences rather than to educate them. His expenses were estimated at 5% for selling, and his distribution overhead near 7%, resulting in some of the largest per-dollar returns in the film industry. His success came from picking topics that would be easily sensationalized, such as religion and sex. He earned the nickname ‘Kroger’ either from his childhood job at the grocer of the same name or from his father’s preference for B. H. Kroger coffee. The success of Mom andDad was mostly due to Babb’s marketing strategy of generating controversy and generating overwhelming ads and ads for a small town town with a similar format. He also made sure that each showing of the film followed a similar-only format of showing the film to adults only, so that it was still being shown around the world decades later. He died of a heart attack in a car accident in 1987. He was buried in Ohio, where he grew up in Lees Creek, Ohio, with his wife and three children.
He had a son, Michael, who is now a successful businessman and a son-in-law, Michael Babb Jr., who is also a film producer and TV show host. He has a daughter, Jennifer, who was married to the late John Cusack, and has two sons, Michael and Michael III, who are also film producers and TV hosts. He lived in Wilmington, Ohio until his death in 1991. He will be buried in a plot of land near his childhood home that he bought in the 1970s and 1980s. His son Michael is a well-known actor and director, having appeared in several films, including “The Godfather” and “The Great Gatsby” He is survived by his wife, Jennifer Babb, and two children, Michael III and Michael Cusick Jr. The couple had three children together, Michael Jr. and Michael Kinsman, who appeared in the movie “Scooby-Doo” in the 1980s and 1990s, and son Michael III in the TV show “The Big C” in which he played the role of a young man whose father is killed in an auto accident. He and his wife also had two daughters, Jennifer and Jennifer, both of whom are still living in the U.S. Now in his 80s, he is the owner of a company called Hygienic Productions, which he started in the early 1990s. The company specializes in presenting repackaged films and new features. He worked with Cox and Underwood, a company that obtained the rights to poorly made or otherwise unmarketable films of subjects that were potentially controversial.
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