Pressbooks (Non-Horror)

Universal Pictures’ Radio Patrol was taken from the newspaper comic strip of the same name. The strip, created by Charles Schmidt (artist) and Eddie Sullivan (a real-life crime reporter), picked up steam when William Randolph Hearst wanted something added to his King Features Syndicate to compete against the popular Dick Tracy comic strip. Radio Patrol was also adapted for radio, a comic book, and a Big Little book (a thick, pocket-sized, hard-covered book with text and page illustrations). The 12-chapter serial was directed by Ford Beebe (Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, The Invisible Man’s Revenge, and lots of jungle pictures) and Clifford Smith (The Adventures of Frank Merriwell).

From the Files of Jerry Blake:

Radio Patrol features many sloppy-looking but energetic fights–brawls that have the lack of staging and wild-looking blows common to most 1930s serials, but also feature some good punches and some nice flips and leaps (as in the Chapter Eight office fight). However, almost all the fistfight scenes are marred by one recurring flaw–directors Ford Beebe and Cliff Smith’s decision to shoot all the fight-scene close-ups of star Grant Withers against the same backdrop (a cement steel-mill wall with the shadow of a ladder in this background); when these shots of Withers are inserted into fights that take place in locations other than the steel mill (apartments, sidewalks, etc.) they have a jarring effect on the viewer–particularly since these mismatched close-ups provide the only glimpses of Withers during the fight scenes; the star’s stunt double Eddie Parker stands in for both medium and long shots, with Beebe and Smith taking few pains to hide the switch.

…

Radio Patrol (1937) PressbookRead More »

At a saddle-sized 18 by 21.5 inches, this pressbook rides the range in style. Tom Mix came from a rodeo background and was rough and tumble onscreen, providing the action and thrills that made westerns so appealing to young audiences. He also toured with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The west of Tom Mix was the contemporary one for his time, with the occasional automobile riding the range along with the horses.

A surviving print of this film was found buried on a chicken farm in what was then known as Czechoslovakia in 1966. Many silent movies had been lost by their studios due to ignorance of their historical importance and to calamities from improper storage or fires, a cultural loss for all of us.

…

Tom Mix No Man’s Gold (1926) PressbookRead More »

A classic swashbuckling take on the Alexandre Dumas novel, The Three Musketeers is an exhilarating ride. Gene Kelley has a field day with all the athletic swordplay and derring-do. Director George Sidney makes it a rousing, light-hearted, romp in sumptuous technicolor. With Vincent Price, Van Heflin, Lana Turner, Angela Lansbury, and June Allyson, how could you go wrong? This was Lana Turner’s first color feature, although she didn’t want to do it. After a suspension and some convincing, along with a stronger rewrite for her character (Countess de Winter), she joined in the fun. According to TCM’s notes, Robert Taylor, Ricardo Montalban, and Sidney Greenstreet were set to play the three musketeers at some point before the final cast was set. Due to a broken ankle, Kelly did his fencing scenes toward the end of filming. All told, it was a money-maker for MGM.

This is the separate Publicity and Exploitation section of the main pressbook, of which I’ll post soon. As usual with MGM pressbooks, it was printed on newspaper sheets, one-sided, so I’ve raised the white balance to approximate how it looked before age and acidity set in.

…

The Three Musketeers (1948)
Publicity and Exploitation PressbookRead More »

I posted the Columbia serial pressbook previously. This is the theater herald. Heralds were given out to patrons at the movie theater (or could be distributed through local newspapers), usually before the picture ran, to promote attendance. Heralds came in various sizes and this one is rather long to grab attention. Theaters would print their location on the herald, so room was left for that either on the back side of a one-page herald or on the last page of a four-page one. Heralds were one printed sheet and, depending on the size, could be left unfolded (making two pages) or folded (making four pages). Spanish movie heralds differed from the English theater heralds mostly in size. English heralds leaned to larger sheets while the Spanish heralds were pretty small, pocket-sized, you could say, and two pages. But some of the art on the Spanish heralds is really awesome, like on their lobby cards.

The oldest herald in my collection, so far, dates from 1926 and was for a stage play called The Cradle Snatchers (with a third-billed Humphrey Bogart). For an example of a Spanish herald see The Lady and the Monster. Heralds also came in tabloid size and comic strip style! See Invaders from Mars for an example.

I’ve posted a lot of heralds so do a search on “herald” and experience the art of printed promotion.

LSD was all the rage in the 1960s. This acid-trippy comedy, Movie Star,  American Style or; LSD, I Hate You, however, was about Dr. Horatio and his LSD therapy for Honey Bunny (Paula Lane) and assorted other spaced-out patients. Unhinged comedy ensues, with a tinted acid trip sequence to fulfill the LSD requirement. One would think AIP came up with this one but they didn’t. The 1960s and 1970s produced much ‘looser’ storylines in movies as television kept the candle burning for purity and social stability (for the most part: there were exceptions). Those two decades though, in the movies, were anything but pure and socially stable. They were great, however, for cheeky stuff (or horror), and adult themes finally making their way to the silver screen. What’s really wild? The tie-in to Streamline Trailers. The tie-in to bedding is pretty funny too. Robert Strauss (he played Animal in Stalag-17), was adept at comedy and drama, with a unique voice and face that could be menacing or comical at the drop of a hat. He was a familiar face on television in the 1960s and 1970s, aside from his many movies.

…

Movie Star, American Style (1966) PressbookRead More »

I picked up this Tarzan Escapes MGM pressbook back in 2022. It is extremely fragile so I hemmed and hawed over how to create images from its pages. I have a 24 inch commercial flatbed  scanner, but handling old pressbooks, especially ones that were printed on newsprint paper (high acid content so they deteriorate pretty quickly), is a dicey affair. I eventually worked out a system to move the pressbook around without overly handling it and here you go. I lost a few edge pieces here and there, but all in all, not too bad.

MGM created wonderful pressbooks, but kept the costs down by using paper that wouldn’t last. Of course, who would have thought there would be people like me, eventually, who would collect such disposable movie advertising? Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan were a perfect match for Tarzan and Jane; and the movies turned out to be thrilling and fun at the same time. Check out Cafe Roxy for their blog entry on this movie (https://caferoxy.blogspot.com/2010/10/still-batty-about-tarzan-escapes.html). American audiences didn’t get to see the deleted vampire bats scene and due to a problem with the initial direction, the movie was reshot, so many earlier scenes–some gruesome–were excised. Bummer.

…

Tarzan Escapes (1936) PressbookRead More »

While It Came From Hollywood, some films in American theaters from AIP in the 1950s through 1970s came from Italy. American International Pictures had a successful formula for making budget productions that made a profit by targeting male teenagers. But competition latched onto the Arkoff Formula (Samuel Arkoff and James H. Nicholson started AIP as American Releasing Corporation), leading AIP to look to foreign movies for a fresh, cost-effective source of movies. Part of that formula included releasing two B movies on a double-bill, when the usual approach was to release one A and one B.  A movies were more expensive, so having two Bs kept costs low. Their competitors, other independent companies, followed suit and AIP looked to Italy to distribute Italian productions while they figured out a new approach for production at home. One notable success from Italy, for horror fans, was Black Sunday 1960. By the 1960s, AIP teamed with Roger Corman to produce another successful run of horror movies with Vincent Price, and of course, there were the beach party movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Then came the motorcycle cycle and the psychedelic cycle of movies. Notice a trend here? AIP used focus groups to keep on top of what movies their target audience wanted to see.

The Year of the Cannibals is an updated retelling of Antigone, the Greek play by Sophocles, where two warring factions leave the dead in their wake. Britt Ekland plays Antigone. In this version, bodies are left openly in the streets and young people start to defy authorities to bury them. AIP distributed the dubbed movie in 1971 (IMDb).

…

The Year of the Cannibals (1969) PressbookRead More »

A Monogram studio B movie, Allotment Wives notably starred Kay Francis, Otto Kruger, and Paul Kelly. From the poverty row studio that brought us wonderful pop culture Bs like Charlie Chan, the Bowery Boys, Bela Lugosi’s weird but wonderful horrors, and more than a tumbling tumble-weeds’ worth of westerns, came this military insurance scam film noir. Kay Francis was the highest paid actress for Warner Brothers of the 1930s, after a successful run at Paramount. When she openly disagreed with the quality of the work she was getting from Warner Brothers, they relegated her to the backlot for speaking out. Picture deals became harder to find and she eventually signed with Monogram. The term ‘poverty row’ evolved from the smaller B movie studios that produced movies during the 1920s through 1950s, with a lot less money, lesser known actors (or known actors on a downward spiral), and production schedules that didn’t allow for retakes and elaborate staging. But many of those movies remain endearing to movie fans today, especially this one. This pressbook is a more prestigious example of a Monogram pressbook mostly due to Kay Francis’s presence.

…

Allotment Wives (1945) PressbookRead More »

Blind Alley with Chester Morris as the criminal holding a family hostage was remade in 1948 as The Dark Past. In the household is a psychologist who shrinks Morris’s nasty character into reliving his bad upbringing. Originally based on a play called Smoke Screen (as noted by TCM), it also had television productions, one with Darrin McGavin (Night Stalker, baby!). Rather idealistic in how quickly the psychiatrist solves the reason for all the criminal behavior, I still like Morris’s turn at being psychoanalyzed.

…

Blind Alley (1939) PressbookRead More »