Pressbooks (Non-Horror)

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.

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Blind Alley (1939) PressbookRead More »

Columbia’s Jack Holt was a popular actor for the studio, who played under his own name. After an argument with Harry Cohn, the studio head, he was relegated to doing a serial: it turned out to be one of Columbia’s top money-makers and with the same film crew, also was a solid actioner that played as well for adults as it did the kids. Columbia had a habit of mistreating their top grossers: The Three Stooges, a case in point. While they were paid peanuts, Columbia went to the bank smiling off of their short comedies. Unfortunately for Cohn, Holt left Columbia with a smile after the serial was completed so there wasn’t a sequel. In Gripping Chapters, The Sound Movie Serial, author Ron Backer gives the record for cliffovers (the end of a serial chapter where our hero takes a sudden precipitous descent) to Holt of the Secret Service. “…who went over a waterfall in an open canoe, rolled off a high cliff in a fight and appeared to go over a cliff in a car, not to mention two falls in a ship and one fall climbing a ladder on a high building.”

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Holt of the Secret Service (1941)
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If you liked the original Star Trek episode The Galileo Seven, you can thank Five Came Back as the source (as noted in https://reactormag.com/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-the-galileo-seven/).  This B movie presaged the disaster movies to follow as a group of airplane passengers are forced down into the Amazon Jungle. And what a group: Lucille Ball, Chester Morris, John Carradine, Aubrey Smith, Patric Knowles, Allen Jenkins, Wendy Barrie, and more. This pressbook belies the B movie status, as did the box office as the movie was a 1939 success. There is an inset herald (meaning it’s glued into the pressbook), Little Life Stories of the players, and lots of promotional ideas and articles. TCM’s article on the movie notes that Lucille Ball had a rough time of it during shooting. Between clashes with the director, Chester Morris’s unwanted advances, and two black spiders crawling onto her hair from one of the imported trees on set, she, at least, had the last laugh: critics singled out her performance. Even the New York Times liked the movie! What really grabbed me while watching it was the dialog and good use of a cheap budget.  Click each image to enlarge, but due to WordPress’s automatic and asinine scaling of my images, I’ve included a download with larger images. Five Came Back Pressbook

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Five Came Back (1939) PressbookRead More »

I vaguely remember watching this two-episodes (1966) Tarzan story on television when it originally aired. This pressbook is for the movie that was made combining the two episodes (sans all those commercials of course). It was released in the U.S., then UK, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Denmark, France, and Finland, to give you an idea how just two episodes from a television series can generate more residual money, though I don’t think Ron Ely saw much of it. He was a perfect fit in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, but that film was near unwatchable due to a bizarre and failed attempt at camp humor, a too-low budget, and poorly directed acting; dealing the pulp superhero, who preceded Superman, a bum deal. Ironically, with a finer touch and adult but smart script, Pal would have neatly presaged Raiders of the Lost Ark. Numerous attempts to reignite a Doc Savage movie have occurred over the years, with names like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson associated with playing the lead. (Pressbook courtesy of It Came From Hollywood.)

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Tarzan’s Deadly Silence (1970) PressbookRead More »

Norma Desmond got it wrong. It wasn’t the pictures that got smaller, the pressbooks did. Clyde Beatty’s Darkest Africa serial pressbook measures 12 inches by 24 inches, with stiff cardstock for the covers that are in gorgeous color. At 16 pages it isn’t the longest pressbook out there page-wise, but boy, it does pack a wallop to promote the serial to the theater managers. Clyde Beatty liked getting lost in the jungle and this was Republic Pictures first serial. The Bat-Men were the first to use the special flying effects that Republic would continue to improve in future serials, notably 1941’s The Adventures of Captain Marvel. Stock footage of Clyde Beatty’s Lost in the Jungle made it into this serial. Beatty’s name was sellable enough that he, along with Crash Corrigan (Undersea Kingdom) and Ray Mala (Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island) played under his own name. One of six jungle pics for Republic, an envisioned sequence would have had our hero dealing with giant centipedes and arachnids in the Cavern of the Scaly Ones, in episode two (cited from Valley of the Cliffhangers by Jack Mathis). Also from the Mathis book, see the rundown on Beatty’s animal bits for the serial, below. Download larger images: Darkest Africa Pressbook

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Darkest Africa (1936) PressbookRead More »

TCM, in their notes section for Dante’s Inferno (1935), states that Spencer Tracy “agreed to have his name eliminated from advertising and publicity regarding the film and from the opening screen credits.” He said it was the worst picture made anywhere, anytime. Variety did like the ten minutes of Hell, though. I haven’t seen the movie so can’t say either way, but this pressbook is awesome and cost a lot of money to print. It is 15.5 inches by 21.5 inches and lots of pages crammed with promotional information. There’s also a translucent red plastic sheet that was inserted into the pressbook, but not sure what that was for. (You will need a large screen to view this beauty online.) One other note from TCM citing the Hollywood Reporter: the movie was delayed due to the need to manufacture small articles of clothing for thousands of devils so the “purity squad’ wouldn’t be offended. Download the pressbook images here: Dante’s Inferno 1935 Pressbook

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Dante’s Inferno (1935) PressbookRead More »

I recently picked this pressbook (more like two-sided large sheet) for La Jungle en Feu. The poster art is gorgeous and has that propaganda-style of idealized imagery.  Luciano (Arturo de Córdova) has a strong dislike of women. Guess where that goes when Estrella (Dolores del Rio) enters the part of the jungle the guys hang out in. Click the images to enlarge or download.

As was par for the course with Orson Welles and Hollywood, he’d polish up a gem of a movie and they would just chisel away at it until, while it still had its luster, Welles sparkle of cinematic genius was dulled and edited away into lost pieces of what should have been. Another director who also wasn’t taken all that seriously by Hollywood was William Castle (but taken seriously by horror movie fans), who was originally hoping to direct The Lady from Shanghai, but had to settle for an assistant director position. Welles’s whimsical and dark comedic wit permeate the movie that Harry Cohn hated, and the shootout in the hall of mirrors is classic noir. So much editing was done outside of Welles’ control that elaborate scenes and extended drama in the fun house were lost. I wonder what Welles, given today’s streaming environment, could have accomplished? Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane were perfect in their roles. Definitely, this is one movie to see on the big screen.

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The Lady from Shanghai (1947) PressbookRead More »

An AIP double-bill (that ran like the wind for drive-ins everywhere) with The Mini-Skirt Mob (an all-girl biker rumble). The New York Times critic gave a succinct “two reels of celluloid junk” to both movies, and sums up with “Mini-Skirt is sickening and Angels is merely dull.” Okay, so you can’t please everyone. But toss these two babies onto a drive-in screen and add some snack shack goodies and I’ll bet a good time would commence. Vroom! Vroom!

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Angels From Hell (1968) PressbookRead More »

A bunch of pretty (and pretty loopy, scheming, petty, and the usual female cinema stereotypes for the 1940s) sorority sisters get together on a dark and stormy initiation night. One of them winds up dead. Much finger-pointing and rivalries ensue as the mystery is secondary to having a bunch of–did I mention?–pretty girls being the focus of this B seat-filler. TCM has a page of quotes from this movie: my favorite is “Suppose I pick you up and we’ll do something gay?” Ah, those wacky sorority types. Exploitation for this movie included suggestions to “use lots of girlie photos” and “start early search to find the nine most popular girls in town.” Also, there was the “plant pictures where men meet” and snipe mystery and girlie magazines by affixing labels hawking Nine Girls. To be honest, these are the kinds of pressbooks (and movies) I really enjoy. Go figure. And where do men meet? That sounds like a catchy title for something, not sure what though.

Click each image to expand it–you will need a BIG screen–or right-click the expanded image to download it. And no sleuthing or sorority babes needed to find more pressbooks from Zombos’ Closet. But, you can still invite a sorority babe if you like.

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Nine Girls (1944) PressbookRead More »

Here is the 4-page movie herald for Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back 1934. Debonair Ronald Colman again stars as the urbane adventurer fighting crime. Lucille Ball makes an uncredited appearance as a bridesmaid. In 1947, another Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back starring Ron Randell hit the screens. Warner Oland (aka Charlie Chan in 16 movies) provides the sinister machinations in this pre-code B thriller.