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Smart Alecks (1942) Pressbook

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I’m sure this pressbook was originally eight pages, but six is all I have for now until I can track down another copy. The East Side Kids were quite a movie franchise, especially if you count their various iterations (Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, Bowery Boys) along the way to Monogram. I will say the East Side Kids were my favorite grouping. The ensemble wordplay and relationships were always fun to watch, even if the story wasn’t top-notch. Sure, Monogram didn’t have a lot of money to kick around, but they made a lot of good, entertaining movies anyway. Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison shows of his hoofing talents in this one.

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Take One Small Step (1949) Pressbook

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To see William Powell at the peak of his detection skills, go no further than The Thin Man series. Interestingly, the pressbook tries to play up the humor angle, given Powell’s Nick Charles whimsy, but this movie left much of that on the dock before it shipped to theaters.

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Mighty Joe Young (1949)
British Pressbook

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Had Mighty Joe Young sold well at the box office, the sequel would have been Joe Meets Tarzan. Sorry to not see that movie get made. Do not hate me, but I tend to enjoy Joe more than King Kong. Both are great movies, but I like the happier ending in this one. Although Ray Harryhausen began stop-motion animation with Puppetoons, this is his first major movie animation that would lead to more fantasy and monster films. I had the pleasure of meeting Terry Moore at a Monster Bash some years ago.

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Mighty Joe Young (1949)
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The Invisible Boy (1957) Pressbook

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Bruce Eder sums up this movie quite well. As Eder points out, elements of The Invisible Boy, like the super computer that wants to take over the world, would be seen in later movies, like Colossus: The Forbin Project. And the fact that Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet) time travels back to 1957 is so understated, and the scientists and boy’s family so unimpressed by Robby, and the boy’s smarts in putting him back together, it’s kind of funny and sad and intuitive as to 1950s sentiments on child-rearing and American atomic age insouciance and superciliousness rolled into one. At the heart of the story is a boy who just wants to be able to play and have fun. Given that MGM wanted a movie vehicle to re-use Robby, since he cost so much to build, may have rushed the script into less-than-polished as it should have been; but Cyril Hume and Edmund Cooper manage to add some food for thought while keeping it at a juvenile level for the matinee kids.

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On the Spot (1940) Pressbook

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Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland team up in another Monogram comedy that mixes the usual 1940s tropes (like gangsters and  soda jerks for instance). Darro gets top-billing, Moreland (his “colored crony,” “colored cohort”), barely a nod, though the two made a good team up. The Shake It Up with Soda Store Stunts! is informative. I would have loved to have seen Skello in the theater lobby, for sure.

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Red Barry (1938) Pressbook

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If Larry "Buster" Crabbe is in it, it must be good. He plays a detective after stolen bonds worth two million dollars, which in today's money is a lot more. Red Barry was a comic strip by Will Gould. No relation to Chester Gould who did Dick Tracy. William Gould played Commissioner Tom (again, no relation to either Goulds), and Rita Gould played Mama Sonia (once again, no relation to the other Goulds either). That's a lot of unrelated Goulds. The pressbook has a neat appearance with a centerfold spread of promotional ideas.

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The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) Pressbook

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As Christopher Lee said, the first one should have been the last one. The Castle of Fu Manchu is the worst of the lot, but the first two are good, if questionable today. The first movie in the series is made better by Nigel Green as Nayland Smith. Here is the British pressbook. One thing, the pressbook states that the saying “one picture is worth a thousand words” is a Chinese proverb. Nope. Not even close. Fred R. Barnard is credited with saying it in 1921, although he did pretend it was a Chinese proverb.

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Buck Rogers (1939) Pressbook

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In the 1970s, serials were rediscovered by the comic and science fiction fans for good reason: you can criticize the budgets, but the stories were pretty nifty and the imagination ran wild. I always liked Buck Rogers more than Flash Gordon, though I found both a lot of fun and exciting. There's just something really cool about a person who wakes up 500 years later than the year he went to sleep in. 

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Campus Sleuth (1947) Pressbook

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Those crazy teenagers, always getting into trouble on campus, at least in 1940s and 1950s movies. Mostly, the appeal of this pressbook was Noel Neill, Lois Lane in George Reeves Superman television series. I liked Noel Neill but she always seemed too fragile and less headstrong than a Lois Lane should be. Phyllis Coates, who played Lois in the first season of Superman, was replaced by Neill. Coates was pushy and tough in appearance and action, which made the first season of Superman more for the entire family instead of just the kids, which the later seasons played to. She also hated the idea that Lois couldn’t figure out that Clark Kent and Superman were one and the same; something the comic picked up on and tried to explain in a very bad way (see Superman issue 330). Let’s be honest: those glasses and mild mannered demeanor are the worst attempt at disguise ever done in comics. Just go with it.

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Chasing Trouble (1940) Pressbook

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Frankie Darro starred (more or less with the dog, Rinty) in The Wolf Dog (1933) serial and other actioners from Mascot. He had a big role in The Phantom Empire serial in 1935. His small stature and youthful looks kept him into young roles for a while until his age caught up with him. He also starred, along with Mantan Moreland, in movies like this one for Monogram. He also did a lot of television work. Notably, Mantan Moreland receives barely a mention in the pressbook as an “ace colored comic.” Moreland was, for a moment, considered as a replacement for Shemp in the Three Stooges, but that did not happen. He would have been awesome.

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