97 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.

Which reality TV star sued Hallmark in 2007 over a card showing her face on a cartoon waitress?

Paris Hilton objected to a card that paired her photo with a play on her trademarked catchphrase; Hallmark called it parody, and the two sides settled out of court.

Which actress, famous as sitcom homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, played a navy pilot's wife in Hallmark's The Lost Valentine?

Betty White earned a Screen Actors Guild nomination for the 2011 film, as a woman who has waited decades for word of what happened to her missing husband.

Which lifestyle mogul moved her daily talk show from syndication to Hallmark Channel in September 2010?

Martha Stewart brought more than the talk show: her company also made evening specials for Hallmark Channel, beginning with Halloween and Christmas editions.

Hallmark Channel and We TV picked up cable reruns of which hit 1980s NBC sitcom in the same month?

The Golden Girls spent seven seasons on NBC from 1985, following four older women who share a house in Miami.

Which veteran of 1960s sitcoms played criminology professor Jonathan Maxwell in Hallmark Channel's Murder 101 films?

Dick Van Dyke shared the screen with his own son Barry, who played an ex-cop turned private detective working cases beside the professor.

Hallmark's Morning Show Mysteries, starring Holly Robinson Peete, are based on novels by which Today show personality?

Al Roker's hero in the books is Billy Blessing; the films renamed the sleuth Billie Blessings, a Seattle TV chef who keeps getting pulled into murder cases.

Which Oscar-winning comedian played the Cheshire Cat in Hallmark Entertainment's 1999 film of Alice in Wonderland?

Whoopi Goldberg joined an all-star Wonderland in which Ben Kingsley, Gene Wilder, Christopher Lloyd and Robbie Coltrane also played creatures Alice meets.

Which NFL mother plays a barbecue restaurant manager in Hallmark's Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story?

Donna Kelce shares the 2024 film with cameos from head coach Andy Reid and several Chiefs players, in a story about a family chasing the team's Fan of the Year prize.

Which poet, who read at Bill Clinton's first inauguration, created a line of Hallmark cards and home goods in 2000?

Maya Angelou shrugged off critics of the venture, saying it was perfectly in keeping with her role as the people's poet.

Which former James Bond played a wealthy duke in Hallmark Channel's 2011 royal romance A Princess for Christmas?

Roger Moore plays the grandfather who invites two children and their aunt Jules to spend the holidays in Castlebury, where she falls for a prince.

Chesapeake Shores, Hallmark's saga of the O'Brien family, takes place in a small town in which US state?

Maryland is home to the fictional town, where Abby O'Brien returns from New York to save her sister's inn from foreclosure and meets her first love again.

Which former child model played florist and ex-lawyer Abby Knight in Hallmark's three Flower Shop Mysteries films?

Brooke Shields was also an executive producer of the 2016 films, in which Abby keeps crossing paths with a bar owner and former private investigator.

Hallmark mystery star Alison Sweeney spent two decades as Sami Brady on which NBC daytime soap?

Days of Our Lives kept Sweeney under contract from 1993 to 2014, and from 2007 she doubled as the host of The Biggest Loser.

Hallmark favorite Lacey Chabert first became famous playing Claudia Salinger in which 1990s Fox family drama?

Party of Five ran from 1994 to 2000, and while it was on the air Chabert also became the voice of Eliza in the cartoon The Wild Thornberrys.

In Hallmark's time-travel drama The Way Home, what sends members of the Landry family back into the past?

A pond does the work: one Landry followed a stray dog to it, fell in, and was sent back to 1790. Three generations of Landry women are at the heart of the story.

In Hallmark's Good Witch, Cassie Nightingale runs a bed and breakfast called Grey House in which fictional town?

Middleton first appeared in seven TV movies about Cassie before the series began, and its mayor is one of her oldest friends.

The four heroes of Hallmark's Signed, Sealed, Delivered work in which branch of the United States Postal Service?

Dead letter office staff are the unlikely leads of a series created by the producer of Touched by an Angel, and like that show it draws on its characters' faith.

Which Vanderbilt mansion, America's largest privately owned house, was the set of a 2023 Hallmark Christmas film?

Biltmore Estate, in Asheville, North Carolina, plays itself in A Biltmore Christmas, a time-travel romance that moves between the present day and the 1940s.

Which Ohio rival of Hallmark, the world's number two card maker, created the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake?

American Greetings launched Strawberry Shortcake through a licensing arm called Those Characters From Cleveland, and the Care Bears followed with $2 billion in sales in two years.

What disaster destroyed the Hall family's card store in 1915, pushing Joyce Hall to start printing his own cards?

A fire wiped out the brothers' stock, so Hall took out a loan and bought an engraving business; printing his own designs grew into a bigger trade than the one he had lost.

Hallmark founder Joyce Hall, a traveling minister's son, was born in David City in which Great Plains state?

Nebraska is also where a teenage Hall started the Norfolk Post Card Company in 1907, run at first out of the bookstore where he worked.

Which Spanish-language US television network did Hallmark Cards control from the late 1980s until selling it in 1992?

Univision got its name under Hallmark, which led the group that bought the Spanish International Network's stations, a deal that left the network carrying heavy debt.

In December 2019 Hallmark Channel pulled, then restored, ads showing two brides kissing for which wedding company?

Zola saw its ads return within days, when Hallmark reversed course and said it would work with the media watchdog GLAAD on more inclusive programming.

Which 2020 film starring Jonathan Bennett was the first on Hallmark Channel to prominently feature a same-sex couple?

The Christmas House cast Treat Williams and Sharon Lawrence as parents who call their two adult sons back to recreate an old tradition.

Which Superman Returns lead played a firefighter adopted by a stray cat in Hallmark's The Nine Lives of Christmas?

Brandon Routh's fireman Zachary renovates houses without ever making one his home, until a cat he rescues from a dog decides to move in.

Which actor, Santa in Elf, earned an Emmy nomination as Luke in Hallmark Channel's 2006 film The Christmas Card?

Ed Asner's Luke is saved from a speeding car by Cody, the stranger at the center of the story; Hallmark tied the premiere to a national Cards for Troops campaign.

Which Cheers star played the shipwrecked hero of Hallmark Entertainment's 1996 miniseries Gulliver's Travels?

Ted Danson led a cast that included Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif and Mary Steenburgen, and the miniseries won five of its eleven Emmy nominations.

Which Jurassic Park star played the wizard of the title in Merlin, Hallmark Entertainment's 1998 NBC miniseries?

Sam Neill's wizard shared the screen with Helena Bonham Carter, Miranda Richardson, Isabella Rossellini and Rutger Hauer in a two-part retelling of the Arthur legends.

Which actor played the Rockford Files star's schizophrenic brother in Promise, a 1986 Hallmark Hall of Fame film?

James Woods won the lead actor Emmy ahead of Garner, who was nominated for the same award, and the film took five Emmys in all.

Which American TV heartthrob played the prince in Hallmark Hall of Fame's British 1970 Hamlet, winner of five Emmys?

Richard Chamberlain's Hamlet also aired on British television and drew thirteen Emmy nominations; Hall of Fame had first staged the play in 1953 with Maurice Evans.

The 2008 Hallmark Hall of Fame film Front of the Class follows teacher Brad Cohen's life with which condition?

Tourette syndrome went unnamed through Cohen's childhood until his mother found it in a medical book at the library; his memoir credits it with making him the teacher he never had.

Which August Wilson play, about siblings fighting over a family heirloom, did Hallmark Hall of Fame film in 1995?

The Piano Lesson was adapted for television by Wilson himself; its Boy Willie wants to sell the instrument to buy land, and his sister Berniece refuses to part with it.

Which Tuesdays with Morrie author wrote Have a Little Faith, the 2011 film that took Hallmark Hall of Fame back to ABC?

Mitch Albom, a Detroit Free Press columnist, wrote the script from his own nonfiction book, though the film's network premiere drew very low ratings.

Which future star of The Americans led the 2005 Hallmark Hall of Fame film The Magic of Ordinary Days?

Keri Russell plays Livy, a minister's daughter pregnant by a Navy flight instructor, whose father arranges a wartime marriage to a stranger to hide the scandal.

Hallmark Playhouse, a radio drama begun in 1948, was hosted by the Lost Horizon novelist who invented which fabled land?

Shangri-La's creator picked the stories himself, promising to ransack two thousand years of literature for works that had never been broadcast.

Before Hallmark Playhouse, the card maker sponsored a 1940s radio series that dramatized stories from which magazine?

Reader's Digest supplied the stories for the series Hallmark sponsored from 1946, but the card maker dropped it in 1948 because executives no longer wanted to share the billing.

Which honor from the US government, more often given to individuals, was awarded to Hallmark Cards in 1985?

National Medal of Arts went to the company in 1985, by which time it had been putting Hallmark Hall of Fame dramas on television since 1951.

Hallmark Channel grew out of two cable services, ACTS and VISN, that shared one satellite signal to broadcast what?

Religious programming was phased out step by step in favor of family films, and by the 2001 rebrand the faith groups' share was cut to 14 hours a week.

Which New York Times puzzle editor has speaking cameos in three of Hallmark's Crossword Mysteries films?

Will Shortz has edited the paper's puzzles since 1993 and holds a degree in enigmatology, a field of study he invented for himself.

Which actor played Mountie Jack Thornton, the teacher's first love, in five seasons of When Calls the Heart?

Daniel Lissing's exit after season five opened the story to two newcomers, Nathan Grant and saloon owner Lucas Bouchard, who both arrived in season six.

Chesapeake Shores lead Jesse Metcalfe first found fame as teenage gardener John Rowland on which ABC series?

Desperate Housewives made Metcalfe a star in 2004, and before joining Hallmark he also played Christopher Ewing in the revival of Dallas.

Hallmark regular Autumn Reeser rose to fame as Taylor Townsend on which teen drama of the 2000s?

The O.C. gave Reeser her breakout, and she has since taken leading roles in more than a dozen Hallmark Channel films.

Hallmark leading lady Jill Wagner was the on-field host of which ABC obstacle-course game show from 2008?

Wipeout kept Wagner on the course for four seasons before she left in 2011 to focus on acting, only to return two years later.

When Calls the Heart's Jack Wagner reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985 with which ballad?

All I Need made Wagner a pop star decades before he joined the frontier drama in 2014 as Bill Avery; he also led Hallmark's Wedding March films.

Which Life Goes On actress played bookstore owner Samantha Kinsey in eleven Mystery Woman films for Hallmark Channel?

Kellie Martin's heroine inherits the shop in the first film and cracks real cases with help from its caretaker, who turns out to have a past in a secret government agency.

Which Back to the Future actress played Cathy Davis, soccer mom and secret agent, in Hallmark Channel's Jane Doe films?

Lea Thompson also directed two of the nine films, in which a retired agent is quietly called back to solve cases for a federal security agency.

Which Hallmark greeting card animals became a Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon on NBC in 1982?

Shirt Tales began in 1980 as designs by Hallmark artist Janet Elizabeth Manco, and the cards sold so well that the company took them to Saturday morning television.

Which Broadway song-and-dance man hosted Zoobilee Zoo, Hallmark's 1980s children's series, dressed as a snow leopard?

Ben Vereen opened each episode as the mayor of Zoobilee Zoo, greeting viewers before six animal friends called Zoobles set off on that day's adventure.

Which Hallmark regular co-wrote and starred in Three Wise Men and a Baby, the most-watched cable TV movie of 2022?

Paul Campbell wrote the script with Kimberley Sustad and played one of three siblings suddenly left in charge of an infant over the holidays.

Which Supergirl actress stars as Kat Landry, daughter of Andie MacDowell's character Del, in Hallmark's The Way Home?

Chyler Leigh plays the middle of three Landry generations, between her mother Del and her own teenage daughter Alice.