Sticks Nix Hick Pix
"Sticks Nix Hick Pix" is a headline printed in Variety, a newspaper covering Hollywood and the entertainment industry, on July 17, 1935, over an article about the reaction of rural audiences to movies about rural life. Variety was known for its playful use of Broadway and Hollywood jargon to pack as much meaning as possible into a small headline or article; examples include "H'wood" and "biz".
Using a form of headlinese that the newspaper called "slanguage", "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" means that people in rural areas reject motion pictures about rural people. The accompanying article is based on an interview with Joe Kinsky, who operated theaters in the mostly rural Tri-State circuit of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Kinsky claims that "Farmers are not interested in farming pictures", and that two recent pictures set in an upper-class milieu, The Barretts of Wimpole Street and The Scarlet Pimpernel, had been big successes with his demographic.
According to Spanish writer and journalist Peter Besas, the headline was written by Variety editor-in-chief Abel Green.
Because it was the lead headline of the paper, it was printed in all capital letters. Standard style for other Variety headlines was initial capital letters on almost all words.
Mentions and similar headlines
"STICKS NIX HICK PIX" is a frequently-cited headline, although references often get it slightly wrong.It is used as an example of space constraint-driven "headlinese" in Garner's Modern American Usage.
Similar headlines have appeared in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the New York Daily News.
The 1942 movie Yankee Doodle Dandy features a scene where George M. Cohan explains the headline to some students, leading to an impromptu dance.