It Came From Hollywood sends along this pressbook for Johnny Mack Brown’s The Masked Rider. Ford Beebe directed (Night Monster, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe). Beebe preferred directing westerns, which were the staple movies for many studios at the time. Then the 1950s rolled around and science fiction took over (just like Woody getting sidelined by Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story). John Brown played in many westerns. His handsome mug got a choice spot on Wheaties cereal boxes in 1927, leading to Hollywood and a string of casting in top-liners until he was suddenly replaced during a 1931 movie, Laughing Sinners. According to b-westerns.com “Apparently Brown’s slow, southern drawl caused some problems when talkies arrived, and MGM opted not to renew his contract.” His career nose-dived and he changed his name to Johnny Mack Brown and starred in B-movie westerns, which made him quite popular.
Courtesy of It Came From Hollywood, and through the peregrinations of one Granny Creech, come these hot radio spots for movies from a time when women were eye-candy and men were drooling idiots oggling and dreaming about them as they appeared in various states of distress and undress on the silver screen (story, what story?) We’ve come a long way, baby, as Loretta Lynn sang in her song (which was based on an advertising slogan to entice women to smoke Virginia Slims and get cancer like the men: equal rights for all!) Now you can enjoy these racy radio spots in the privacy of your own computer space. Lucky you.
And now a word from Granny…
I was cleaning up the kitchen the other day after an all-nighter of cooking up some of my famous brew when I heard an awful noise coming from the front of my house. It sounded like something was being dragged, creating a loud screeching sound. I hurried to the front door and opened it, and my eyes fell upon a creepy sight. Coming up my sidewalk were two ghastly figures, both wearing worn black suits with top hats, and dragging what appeared to be a large coffin-shaped wooden box. I approached them and asked what in the world they were doing.
“Are you Granny Creech?” the one on the left asked in a creaky old voice.
“I am. What are you two doing here?”
“My name is Paul McShroud. This is my business associate Robert O’Graves. We have something for you.”
I went and looked at the large wooden box, the top fastened to the bottom with a large rusty lock.
“What is this? What’s in it?”, I asked.
“This is a collection of a lifetime,” Mr. O’Graves said. “We need to pass all of this along and we knew it would be safe and cared for in your hands.” he added. (ZC Note: I found out later the stuff was HOT! They had to ditch it fast and Granny is such a pushover.)
Mr. McShroud reached in his pocket and pulled out an old key. He unlocked the rusty old lock and together he and Mr. O’Graves opened it. I peered in and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was full of musty old radio spots and all sorts of promotional audio material. I stood there with my mouth wide open and glanced at the two cadaverous persons in front of me. …
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat 1934, The Man From Planet X), this, little less than an hour, AIP movie may not get much love, but it is kind of fun to kill some time. IMDb listed the budget at 100 grand. It Came From Hollywood sent these pressbook scans along to help you make up your mind. Ulmer started as a set designer, and worked as an assistant director on influential German Expressionist films like F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and Faust in the 1920s (cited from Britannica). He ran afoul of the studios after having an affair with the wife of someone with enough clout to get him blackballed. That moved him into B and lower-budgeted movies, which actually worked out pretty well for sci fi and noir fans. Jack Lewis, the writer, wrote screenplays for Johnny Mack Brown and other Western cowboy actors.
It Came From Hollywood says: “A full decade before martial arts pictures became a “thing.” I’m claiming that not only is Karate, The Hand of Death the first martial arts picture, but it also created the cinematic trope of the American guy, who is fluent in the Japanese language and culture along with being a master of martial arts, forced to clear his name of a wrong-doing he is accused of while also kicking some ass! Cannon Pictures didn’t invent this sub-genre; Joseph Brenner did, and Allied Artists released it!”
It Came From Hollywood scours the old, crumbling, well-thumbed trade ads and showmanship pieces to bring us this wowzer for The Invisible Man with Claude Rains.
These boffo trade ads were scanned by It Came From Hollywood from Box Office Magazine (1952 to 1956). Trade ads were designed to alert the theater manager to new movies for their silver screens that could bring in good box office receipts to keep the projector humming. Some trade ads were a full page while others could spread across multiple pages, and they were illustrated and worded with gusto to attract attention and excitement.
Moving away from the lustful, unrepentantly malevolent vampire of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, Frank Langella’s Dracula is more romantic, more sensual, and more contemporary in artifice, sporting an opened shirt, less formal aristocratic dress that mixes perfectly into the pretty-look sensibilities of the late 1970s into the 1980s. With Laurence Olivier and Donald Pleasance, John Badham’s approach is classy and more gothic teen heart-throb in tone and mood, like Twilight before Twilight, and without werewolves.
This pressbook, courtesy of It Came From Hollywood, is even less formal. By the late 70s, the art of the pressbook had lessened, providing a minimum of promotional information. One cool item here, though, are the cut-out forms to order radio and television spots for the movie. With a minimum of newspaper ads to order, and the Promotion page that directs to “the Universal fieldman in your local area” to request the Promotion Manual, one can see the shift away from the ballyhoo and exploitation that was previously more theater-focused as given in the pressbook. Now radio, and television especially, were the stronger mediums through which movie promotion could be conducted on a larger scale.
Here is a colorful trade ad for Dracula, courtesy of It Came From Hollywood. (ICFH Note: “I discovered these while going through the complete run, page by page, of Universal Weekly.”) Universal Weekly, A Magazine for the Motion Pictures Exhibitors was put out by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company. Previously titled Moving Picture Weekly, you can read digital copies at the Media History Digital Library website.
Sometimes, a quick one sheet, two-sided promotion for a movie is a good way to “press” the release (way back when, of course). Here are two war themed two-siders courtesy of It Came From Hollywood:Mystery Submarine (1962 was the earliest release) and The Quick and the Dead (1963).
It Came From Hollywood rides into town with this pressbook for Terror at Black Falls, which was shot in 1959 but hit theaters in 1962. You would be surprised how many westerns use the word ‘terror’ in their title. Gary Gray had this to say about the picture (from Growing Up on the Set: Interviews with 39 Former Child Actors of Classic Film and Television, by Tom and Jim Goldrup):
The last movie Gary worked in was Terror at Black Falls, which was filmed on location in Scotland, Arkansas. “Kind of an arty western, released back in Arkansas then disappeared. Richard Sarafian had written, produced and directed this show. It was in black and white; the budget was nothing. The film was a lot of fun, and there were some good actors in it like House Peters Jr. and Peter Mamakos. I remember an old guy who lived there, about 98 years old and blind at the time. He’d never been over ten miles away from Scotland. They had just gotten some indoor plumbing in some of the places. The people of Scotland, Arkansas, couldn’t have been nicer.”
While the movie was low on the dollars, the poster art is still wonderful. How many times has a movie survived solely on the lead-in provided by the poster art? Of course today you have word of mouth (aka the big-mouth of social media) to either sink or swim a movie.
While It Came From Hollywood, this pressbook for Tennessee Jamboree geographically would be more easterly. I never could watch Hee-Haw, but I do enjoy some country music (the old stuff mostly, some new stuff) and rockabilly, and toss in a strong fiddlin’ session and I’m aces.
Notice that in AIP’s Warriors Five pressbook (hey, of course It Came From Hollywood) Giovanna Ralli takes the high ground in the poster art while the GIs blow up things and shoot off guns. A lot. Blame it on the male gaze and those legs selling seats in theaters for this war movie’s commercial focus. She, of course, plays the “lovely Italian hooker.” All hookers in Hollywood movies are lovely. The publicity plays her up with “Americans first look-see at sex-sational new star.” Yeah, try pushing that for a movie promotion today. Aside from Ralli, Jack Palance provides the leading man beefcake (with help from his international male cast). This production was a joint Italian, Yugoslavian, French(ian), and American endeavor. In the UK it was paired with a re-issue of Island of Desire with Tab Hunter and Linda Darnell, another war-centric movie about two people who wind up stranded on a deserted island (nope, no Gilligan or professor either). I always got Linda Darnell mixed up with Nanni Darnell, who was my first crush. I was six and she co-starred in 1960s television’s The Magic Land of Allakazam with Mark Wilson. I definitely would never confuse her with Anna Ralli. (One thing to note. I think the interior pages of this pressbook were pinkish in color, to balance with the cover. I changed the images to show a white page color to enhance readability.)
