47 Fun Facts About Hallmark

Where has Hallmark Cards been headquartered since its founder settled there in 1910?

Kansas City, Missouri is where Nebraska teenager Joyce Hall stepped off a train, and the family company later spent its own money rebuilding the worn-out blocks around its offices as Crown Center.

When the postcard craze faded, Hallmark's founder bet that buyers wanted more privacy and began selling cards with what?

Envelopes let people write what they would never put on an open postcard, so Joyce Hall, who had arrived in 1910 with two shoeboxes of postcards, moved on to valentines and Christmas cards.

As a boy, Hallmark's founder sold door-to-door for the California Perfume Company, which later took what name?

Avon Products was the California Perfume Company's later name, and young Joyce Hall sold its soap and perfume to help support his sickly mother.

At Christmas 1917 Hallmark's founders put fancy decorated French paper on sale and so invented what modern product?

Gift wrap as we know it began when the founders ran out of Christmas tissue: the French sheets they sold instead went at once, so they began printing decorative paper of their own.

The brand name Hallmark borrowed a mark of quality used by which 14th-century London tradesmen?

Goldsmiths had their wares stamped at Goldsmiths' Hall to vouch for purity, and J.C. Hall liked that the word both promised quality and happened to contain his family name.

Hallmark's first national advertisement, written by J. C. Hall himself, appeared in which magazine?

Ladies' Home Journal ran the 1928 ad, the first time any greeting card company had advertised nationally, and a decade later Hall moved on to sponsoring a radio show.

Hallmark's slogan runs 'When you care enough to send' what?

The very best was executive Ed Goodman's phrase, and J.C. Hall later said the line put pressure on the company to live up to it with every card.

Until 1954, Hallmark traded under which family name, honoring the founder and the relatives who joined him?

Hall Brothers dates from the years when Rollie and William joined Joyce in the business, and the Hallmark brand sat on the cards for decades before it replaced the family name.

Hallmark Hall of Fame debuted on Christmas Eve 1951 with which opera, written specially for television?

Amahl and the Night Visitors, the tale of a poor boy who meets the Three Kings, suited its Christmas Eve slot, and NBC's live broadcast launched what became the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Which 1980s cartoon heroine was created by Hallmark Cards as a way into the character licensing business?

Rainbow Brite was written by the card company purely to get into licensing, and it worked: she got a TV series, a feature film and millions of dollars' worth of merchandise.

The original host of Hallmark Television Playhouse was a British actress and the daughter of which prime minister?

Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah hosted the early broadcasts soon after playing Fred Astaire's love interest in the MGM musical Royal Wedding.

Hallmark Hall of Fame holds which American television record?

Longest-running primetime series: it has aired since 1951, collecting dozens of Emmys and moving from network to network before settling on Hallmark's own cable channel in 2014.

After NBC dropped Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1979, which network carried it for the next decade?

CBS won the series with the promise of better time slots after NBC grew tired of its low ratings, and Hallmark later hopped to ABC and back again.

Hallmark's Keepsake line, launched in 1973, turned which Christmas decoration into a yearly collecting craze?

Tree ornaments became collectibles once the Keepsake line arrived with the year marked on each design, a small touch that Hallmark says sparked the whole hobby of ornament collecting.

Which actress starred as a mail-order bride from Maine in the 1991 Hallmark Hall of Fame film Sarah, Plain and Tall?

Glenn Close played Sarah opposite Christopher Walken's widowed Kansas farmer, and the film was the most-watched programme of its week, beating even Cheers.

Which astronaut sued Hallmark in 1994 for selling a product that used his name and likeness without permission?

Neil Armstrong objected to a recording of his 'one small step' line being sold without his consent, settled out of court, and gave the money to Purdue, his old university.

In 1984 Hallmark bought Binney & Smith, the Pennsylvania maker of which brand?

Crayola proved such a star that Binney & Smith renamed the whole company after it in 2007, and the same firm also makes Silly Putty.

Which Surrealist painter designed Christmas cards for Hallmark?

Salvador Dalí painted a Madonna and Child for Hallmark, but his Surrealist holy scenes proved too avant-garde for ordinary card buyers.

Which American painter worked under contract for Hallmark at the height of his fame?

Norman Rockwell, famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers, painted Christmas scenes for founder J.C. Hall for a decade from 1948, and they became a mainstay of Hallmark's holiday line.

Hallmark's first licensing deal, signed in 1932, put which studio's cartoon characters on its greeting cards?

Walt Disney signed the deal when Mickey Mouse was barely four years old, giving Hallmark its first licensed characters decades before the card company invented any of its own.

Which Crown Center hotel was the site of the 1981 walkway collapse that killed 114 people?

Hyatt Regency guests had packed the lobby for a tea dance when two suspended walkways gave way; Hallmark's property arm owned the hotel, which now trades as a Sheraton.

When the founder retired in 1966, which member of the family took over as Hallmark's chief executive?

Donald, his son, took charge in 1966 and within two years broke ground on Crown Center, the founder's retirement dream of reviving the tired blocks around headquarters.

Which sharp-tongued cartoon senior has starred on Hallmark's Shoebox cards since 1986?

Maxine was modelled by artist John Wagner on his mother, grandmother and maiden aunts, and she usually appears with her bull terrier, Floyd.

Hallmark Channel dropped which earlier name in 2001 because viewers took it for a travel or science-fiction channel?

Odyssey began life as a religious channel, and its chief executive admitted that however they pitched it, viewers were confused about who and what it was.

Which partner, famous for its puppets, co-owned Hallmark Channel's forerunner with Hallmark Entertainment in the late 1990s?

The Jim Henson Company brought The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock to the relaunched schedule, and a new Henson series premiered the week the Hallmark name arrived.

Beginning in 2014, Hallmark Channel counter-programmed the Super Bowl with which annual showcase of adoptable animals?

Kitten Bowl was a mock football game played by dozens of shelter kittens, most of them later adopted, and it spawned spin-offs timed against baseball's All-Star Game and the Olympics.

The 2014 film Christmas Under Wraps drew a record audience for a Hallmark premiere; who starred?

Candace Cameron Bure played a doctor starting over in Alaska, and the 5.8 million viewers set a channel record that persuaded Hallmark to ramp up its original movies.

Which 2014 film starring Tiffani Thiessen was the first movie made jointly by Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Cards?

Northpole earned a sequel the next year, and in 2017 Christmas in Evergreen went further by building a whole town out of a Hallmark card line.

Through 2023, Hallmark Channel rounded off its holiday season with live New Year coverage of which event?

Tournament of Roses Parade coverage from Pasadena capped the channel's holiday programming for years, until a rival cable network signed a deal to take over from 2024.

Which Suits star played the lead in Hallmark Channel's 2014 Fourth of July romance When Sparks Fly?

Meghan Markle made two Hallmark romances, this one and Dater's Handbook in 2016, the same year she met Prince Harry.

Former Hallmark regular Danica McKellar found fame as Winnie Cooper in which coming-of-age series?

The Wonder Years made McKellar a household face, and she has said that Hallmark's familiar stars bring nostalgia with them wherever they appear.

Where are many Hallmark Channel movies shot to keep costs down?

Canada offers affordable locations and plenty of acting talent, so the picturesque American small towns on screen are often really Canadian ones.

In which 2004 teen comedy did the 'Queen of Hallmark Christmas Movies' co-star as Gretchen Wieners?

Mean Girls gave Lacey Chabert her best-known film role, and she has since made so many Hallmark holiday romances that the press crowned her their queen.

In a long-running Hallmark Movies & Mysteries series, the star of Full House played which librarian sleuth?

Aurora Teagarden, a small-town librarian who belongs to a true-crime club, comes from novels by Charlaine Harris, whose vampire books became HBO's True Blood.

Mariah Carey directed and co-starred with Lacey Chabert in which 2015 Hallmark holiday film?

A Christmas Melody was shot around Cincinnati, and Mariah Carey cast herself as the heroine's old high-school rival, who does her best to make her feel unwelcome.

When Calls the Heart is inspired by a novel by which author?

Janette Oke had already given Hallmark its eleven-film Love Comes Softly saga, and Michael Landon Jr. brought both of her frontier stories to the screen.

Who plays teacher Elizabeth Thatcher in When Calls the Heart?

Erin Krakow has led the series since 2014 as the genteel big-city schoolteacher who takes a job in a frontier mining town and falls for a Mountie.

When Calls the Heart is filmed in a purpose-built frontier town on farmland near which city?

Vancouver is about 45 minutes north of the set, which stands in a farm field among vineyards and inherited its stagecoach from the western Hell on Wheels.

After the mine closed in season two, the town in When Calls the Heart was renamed what?

Hope Valley replaced the name Coal Valley once the mine shut, and the show's devoted fans, who call themselves Hearties, gather every year to tour the set.

Hallmark cut ties with Lori Loughlin in March 2019 after her arrest in what scandal?

College admissions bribery charges came on March 12, 2019; within two days Hallmark had dropped her, and the season then airing paused so that her scenes could be edited out.

Which 2013 drama starring Andie MacDowell as a judge was Hallmark Channel's first scripted series?

Cedar Cove came from a bestselling run of novels about a small-town judge in Washington state, and its three seasons opened the door to Hallmark's later weekly dramas.

Who played Cassie Nightingale in Good Witch, which ran on Hallmark from 2015 to 2021?

Catherine Bell first played the enchanting shopkeeper in a 2008 TV movie, and seven films later Hallmark gave her a weekly series once her long-running drama Army Wives had ended.

After leaving Hallmark in 2020, Bill Abbott took over a country music channel and turned it into which rival network?

Great American Family kept the Hallmark recipe of cosy holiday originals, and Abbott set about hiring the established stars he had worked with at his old network.

Hallmark's mystery-focused sister network launched in 2004 under what original name?

Hallmark Movie Channel became Hallmark Movies & Mysteries in 2014 to tell viewers and advertisers that its mysteries lived there, then shortened its name to Hallmark Mystery in 2024.

Which future Grey's Anatomy star led Hallmark Channel's 2003 frontier romance Love Comes Softly?

Katherine Heigl played a pregnant pioneer widow who accepts a marriage of convenience to get through the winter, two years before the hospital drama made her a star.

Hallmark has printed cards featuring which comic strip's characters since 1960?

Peanuts creator Charles Schulz drew the first cards himself, then let Hallmark's own artists take over Snoopy and the gang, in what Hallmark calls its longest continual licence.

A 'Hallmark holiday' is one perceived to exist primarily for what?

Commercial purposes are the charge behind the jibe, thrown at Boss's Day, Grandparents Day and even Valentine's Day, though Hallmark insists it cannot take credit for creating holidays.