Donald J. Hall, the son of a founder of the greeting card giant Hallmark who as the company’s top executive transformed it by adding new product lines; increasing its emphasis on television; and, with his father, J.C. Hall, developing a commercial and retail complex in Kansas City, Mo., died on Oct. 13 at his home in Mission Hills, Kan. He was 96.
The company announced his death.
Mr. Hall spent his entire working life at Hallmark, a private company started by his father and two brothers. In 1983, during his 17th and last year as the company’s president, Donald Hall took the unusual step of disclosing information about the company’s finances, telling the Kansas City Rotary Club that Hallmark’s revenues would be $1.5 billion that year, up from $149 million in 1966, when he succeeded his father as president.
“We couldn’t have done what we’ve done if we weren’t private,” he told The Kansas City Star in 2010. “We haven’t had to worry about every month’s financial failures.”
As president and later as chairman, Mr. Hall oversaw the introduction of new product lines like the humorous Shoebox greeting cards and others aimed specifically at Black, Hispanic and Jewish consumers. He also extended the company’s traditional card business into books, stickers, albums, mugs, candles, puzzles, jewelry, glass and pewter gifts, and wall-decor products.
In 1984, Hallmark acquired Binney & Smith, known for making Crayola crayons, for $204 million. At the time, Mr. Hall told The Star: “We are extremely proud of our employees, our products and our company. We are delighted to identify another company that shares our own goals, directions and attributes.”
By then, the company had become far too large for Mr. Hall to micromanage it as his father once did. Until the early 1960s, J.C. Hall was known to initial the back of every greeting card design and add his OK.
“Dad had a different style,” Mr. Hall told The Kansas City Times in 1978. “And that was exactly what was called for in his days of operating the company.”
In the 1960s, Mr. Hall and his father formed a real estate subsidiary, Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation, to develop the land surrounding the company’s headquarters in Kansas City. The run-down property there was turned into Crown Center, a complex that opened in the 1970s with office buildings, hotels, a shopping center and condominium residences.
“We have had some criticism,” Mr. Hall told The Star in 1974. “People have called it just another big moneymaking scheme. It’s not. Of course, we wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t think it would carry its own weight one day, but Crown Center is not the place where we would get the biggest return on our money.”
On July 17, 1981, two suspended walkways in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, one of the Crown Center’s hotels, collapsed, killing 114 people. Many of those killed and injured had been participating in an evening tea dance, a regular event at the hotel.
“The past 18 hours have been the darkest of my life as well as one of the worst nights in the history of Kansas City,” Mr. Hall said in a statement. “It is impossible at this time even to speculate on what might have caused the events of last evening.”
In 1985, a state judge in Missouri ruled that one of the hotel’s structural engineers, Jack Gillum, was guilty of gross negligence for failing to monitor the manufacture of the box beam connectors that supported the walkways, and that a second engineer, Dan Duncan, was guilty of simple negligence for not adequately supervising Mr. Gillum. Hallmark continues to run the Crown Center; the Hyatt Regency changed management in 2015 and is now a Sheraton.
Donald Joyce Hall was born on July 9, 1928, in Kansas City, Mo., to Joyce Clyde and Elizabeth (Dilday) Hall. J.C. Hall and his brothers Rollie and William had a picture postcard business, Hall Brothers, which shifted to printing and selling Valentine’s Day and Christmas cards in envelopes in 1915.
In the 1940s, the company introduced its soon-to-be-famous slogan “When you care enough to send the very best” to market its cards. In 1951, it sponsored the first “Hallmark Hall of Fame” television program (an opera, “Amahl and the Night Visitors”) on NBC. And the company, which started using the word “Hallmark” on the back of its cards in 1928, finally changed its name to Hallmark in 1954.
Donald Hall began working for the company as an assistant salesman at 17. He majored in economics at Dartmouth College and received a bachelor’s degree in 1950. After serving in the Army for three years in Japan, he returned to the company as assistant to the president. He was promoted to administrative vice president in 1958 and succeeded his father as president and chief executive in 1966.
The Star described Mr. Hall in 1974 as a low-key man “who looks like any middle-level, 46-year-old, conservatively dressed business executive,” adding, “That’s the way he wants it to be.”
By the time he took over the company, “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” which at various times was a series of specials and a regular anthology series, was known for its prestigious productions of Shakespeare plays and Broadway shows.
In 1972, Mr. Hall pledged $60 million to bankroll “Hall of Fame” productions over the next decade — more than it had spent in the previous 20 years.
“Rather than phasing out or cutting back,” he told The Star, “we’re increasing our commitment to quality television drama.”
In 1974, he offered a glimpse at the type of television he preferred. He told American Women in Radio and Television that the industry should set higher standards for “decency and quality” in programming. “Horrors to the mind and scenes from violence to sex,” he said, “have violated child and adult alike.”
In 1994, Hallmark added to its existing roster of TV productions by acquiring RHI Entertainment, a major producer of TV films and mini-series, for $365 million.
Seven years later, the company started the Hallmark Channel, a popular cable network known for family-oriented programing like romantic comedies, lifestyle shows produced by Martha Stewart, and seasonal events like “Countdown to Christmas,” an annual selection of original holiday movies.
The company also has two other channels: Hallmark Mystery, which began in 2004, and Hallmark Family, which began in 2017.
Mr. Hall retired as chairman in 2016 and took the emeritus title.
He is survived by his sons, Donald Jr., a former chief executive of Hallmark who is currently the executive chairman, and David, a former Hallmark president who is the executive vice chairman; his daughter, Margaret Hall Pence; nine grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. His wife, Adele (Coryell) Hall, died in 2013.
Mr. Hall said in 2002 that Hallmark’s television business benefited from the company’s decision to remain private.
“If we were not a family business, we could not have continuously upheld our feelings about product quality,” he told the Television Academy. “We would not have been able to have 50-plus years of consistency on the programming of the ‘Hall of Fame.’ It would have disappeared, I’m sure, long ago.”
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