Pressbooks (Non-Horror)

Clean-living prizefighter makes good. Monogram made 12 movies based on Ham Fisher’s comic character, Joe Palooka. Lots of movies and shorts in the 1940s and 1950s knocked out stories centered around the boxing ring. We tend to label more contemporary comic book inspired movies as franchise, merchandise, and sequel-itis prone properties, but merchandising and repeated entries for a property started decades ago, even before Star Wars. If it’s hot its cloned more than a gaggle of storm troopers, when the force of an insatiable audience kicks in.

ComicRack reader version: Download Gentleman Joe Palooka Pressbook

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Gentleman Joe Palooka (1946) PressbookRead More »

Courtesy of Joe Dante and Charlie Largent (Trailers From Hell) comes this file copy for The Royal Mounted Rides Again serial. Always interesting are the costs associated with any movie (or serial) promotion. According to the onion skin typewritten page glued (see those annoying brown spots) to page 2, the cost for 6,000 pressbooks came to .233 cents per book; with art work taking 659 dollars for advertising.

ComicRack reader version: Download The Royal Mountain Rides Again Pressbook

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The Royal Mounted Rides Again (1945)
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What’s a jungle without a witch doctor? At least that’s the theme in most jungle movies from the 1950s. See the movie herald. Of course it’s all about oil found in the jungle, which brings out the human wild beasts. The poster art focuses on a victimized white woman, scantily dressed of course, to sell butts in theater seats.

ComicRack reader version: Download Walk Into Hell Pressbook

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Walk Into Hell (1956) PressbookRead More »

The good old days, when we were focused on enemies from without and Reader’s Digest sensations that shocked the nation instead of dodging the rocks we’re throwing at each other now. This one’s a dramatization of a true hero, Claire Phillips. She spied on the Japanese during World War II and survived a lot of hardship and torture. This pressbook pushes the patriotism and zippo lighters, along with a song, Because of You. The poster art does a good job of exploitation without excess.

ComicRack reader version: Download I Was an American Spy Pressbook

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I Was an American Spy (1951) PressbookRead More »

Here’s the theater herald for Walk Into Hell, formerly titled Walk Into Paradise. The movie didn’t make any money when it was called Walk Into Paradise, so switching over to Hell did the trick. Americans are like that.

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Walk Into Hell (1956) HeraldRead More »

Here’s another great pressbook courtesy of Joe Dante and Charlie Largent (Trailers From Hell).  This file copy of Raiders of Ghost City pressbook contains a typed, on onion paper, breakdown of the cost for 6000 pressbooks. It rounds to 20 cents per book, with printing and artwork costing the most. Presumably the cost of producing the pressbooks was offset by the sales of promotional material (see the ad mats and showmanship pages) for the theaters promoting the serial.

ComicRack reader version: Download Raiders of Ghost City Pressbook

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Raiders of Ghost City (1944) PressbookRead More »

Here’s another pressbook courtesy of Joe Dante and Charles Largent (Trailers from Hell). Acquanetta, known by all monsterkids as the exotic and wild jungle woman, appears in her first credited role in Rhythm of the Islands. Later she would go ape for Universal and swing with Tarzan in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman. I will also note that Jane Frazee makes an appearance in this movie too, because…fans of The Honeymooners will recall TV or Not TV, where Ralph and Norton pool their money together to buy a television set. Bad idea from the start, but Ralph mentions Jane Frazee for a laugh as the two of them squabble over who gets to watch what. My favorite episode for sure.

ComicRack reader version: Download Rhythm of the Islands Pressbook

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Rhythm of the Islands (1943) PressbookRead More »

Bulldog Drummond heads to Morocco in this thirteenth outing in a whopping twenty-five movie run. It’s a shame audiences are no longer thrilled by foreign intrigue themes with their spys and mysteries of foreign locales. I’m sure to theater audiences in the 1930s through the 1940s, it must have been thrilling to think about other countries and cultures. Now, of course, politics, easier global travel, and the Internet pretty much take the mystery and intrigue out of it.

ComicRack reader version: Download Bulldog Drummond in Africa Pressbook

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Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938)
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Here’s another pressbook courtesy of director Joe Dante (Trailers from Hell).  What makes this one rather special is the inclusion of a cost sheet, typed on onion paper (you young whippersnappers can Google onion paper). The cost of 8000 pressbooks (six pages for this one) for this movie was a stiff .13 cents per pressbook (rounded off).

ComicRack reader version: Download River Gang Pressbook

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River Gang (1945) PressbookRead More »

You can’t simply live by horror movies alone, no matter how much of a fan you are. There are so many movies that are beautiful, ugly, happy, sad, and just plain mind-expanding or my eyes! dreadful. That’s the wonder of cinema: you have the trashy to the sublime to the breathtaking; whether in the eye or the ear or the cadence of the story itself, it’s really filled with many emotions. Toward the breathtaking side of things there’s Lawrence of Arabia. This 1963 release pressbook for the movie, after it had won a box-full of Oscars, is breathtaking too, in its own way.

ComicRack reader version: Download Lawrence of Arabia Pressbook

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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
1963 Release PressbookRead More »

Interesting to note that this low budget movie does get a nicely produced pressbook to promote it. I like the mustachioed clock with the skull pendulum. It’s an odd little embellishment that, while not exactly well placed, does hint of pressing danger. I’ve not seen the John Calvert Falcon movies, three in all, but this pressbook does wet my appetite to see this one. My favorite series is Boston Blackie with Chester Morris. I’ve yet to come across any of those pressbooks. But it is only a matter of time.

ComicRack reader version: Download Appointment with Murder Pressbook

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Appointment with Murder (1948) PressbookRead More »

Wasn’t it great knowing the good guys from the bad guys? The early Westerns always kept it simple. Perhaps too simple. By the time they rolled around to television, we expected everything to be wrapped up nice and neat by the end, even with the commercials. Buck Jones starred in the 1932 movie, White Eagle, and followed his role into this serial, the eight from Columbia. From Ron Backer’s The Gripping Chapters, the Sound Movie Serial book: “There were apparently a lot of mountain lions roaming the Wild West, as can be seen in the cliffhanger to Chapter Ten of White Eagle (1941)…One lesson to be learned from many of these serials was how easy it was to dispose of a large ferocious beast with a very small knife.”

ComicRack reader version: Download Buck Jones White Eagle Serial Pressbook

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Buck Jones in White Eagle (1941) PressbookRead More »