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26 Warner Winners, the 1926-27 Warner Bros. campaign book sent to theater owners in 1926 to encourage them to show Warner Bros. movies. The book includes 32 pages with mostly one-page spreads on Warner's upcoming movies. Some of the movies listed include While London Sleeps (with Rin Tin Tin), The Brute (with Monte Blue), Dearie (with Irene Rich), Wolf's Clothing (with Patsy Ruth Miller), Simple Sis (with Louise Fazenda), and many more! Of greatest interest is the ad we pictured which shows a movie called "The Jazz Age" is actually the very first ad for what would become "The Jazz Singer"! The ad has lots of copy, but does not really say anything about the movie itself, and no stars are listed, because at this time Warner Bros was in negotiations to buy the screen rights to the play "The Jazz Singer", which was running on Broadway, starring George Jessel. They could not put that in their campaign book, because a contract had not been signed. Of course, soon after this campaign book was published, they DID purchase the rights to the play (but they did not get star George Jessel, and they signed Al Jolson, which was ironic, because the play had been based on his life!), and in 1927 it became the first "talkie", and caused Warner Bros to become one of the leading studios overnight! Note that many of the pages have signed artwork, by many different (quite talented) artists. NOTE THAT THIS IS ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE LARGEST CAMPAIGN BOOKS WE HAVE EVER SEEN, MEASURING A HUGE 13 1/2" x 22", WHICH MEANS THE INDIVIDUAL PAGES ARE PRACTICALLY WINDOW CARD SIZED, AND OF COURSE, VERY SUITABLE FOR FRAMING! We have included images of the cover of the book and two of the two-page spreads (and we did not make a big effort to find the best ones!). Note that even though this campaign book was sent to many theater owners, it appears that very few examples have survived. I have been a collector of campaign books and related material for many years, and I know for certain that this campaign book is extremely rare! Note that some of the movies listed in this book may never have been made at all, and some had their titles changed, and some had their cast or director changed! Note that studios almost always spent far more money preparing campaign books than they did preparing movie posters, because campaign books directly benefited the studio in getting theaters to book the movies, whereas posters more benefited the theaters, rather than the studios (although of course, what was good for the theaters was ultimately good for the studios as well). Finally, note that campaign books in general are extremely rare, and the best of them have often sold for hundreds of dollars, and in the case of the very finest, thousands of dollars!

Important Added Info: Note that included with this very large campaign book is a very unusual 4-page supplement. It is exactly the same size as the regular campaign book, and it advertises two new movies on the interior pages, "Private Izzy Murphy" and "The Heart of Maryland". Obviously, they contracted to make these two movies after the book was published, but they wanted to get them publicized, so they sent this to theaters, with the note on the cover saying "Slip This in your SUNSHINE and PROSPERITY BOOK". This supplement is incredibly rare (we have seen this campaign book before, but we have never seen this supplement).

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