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Paramount 1931-32, the 1931 Paramount campaign book ("Paramount's 20th Birthday Jubilee") sent to theater owners to encourage them to show Paramount movies. The book includes many pages with mostly one-page spreads on Paramount's upcoming movies and stars, including truly magnificent artwork! Some of the movies and stars advertised include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (with Fredric March), No One Man (with Carole Lombard), City Streets (with Gary Cooper), Smiling Lieutenant (with Maurice Chevalier), Daughter of the Dragon (with Anna May Wong), Taboo (directed by Murnau), Monkey Business (with The Marx Brothers), Graft (with Gary Cooper), An American Tragedy (with Sylvia Sidney), Love Me Tonight (with Maurice Chevalier), Indiscretion (with Marlene Dietrich), and much, much more! Note that, because Paramount at this time was one of the very leading studios, and had many of the biggest name stars and directors, and also had lots of money to spend, they made lots of great movies this year, and they also were proposing many unbelievable movies that never got made (see some of the examples above; perhaps it was because the stars became too famous too quickly to make so many movies, or maybe it was because of the Great Depression, but this book has lots of never-made movies that one could only dream of!). Paramount sometimes did not use as much full-color artwork as the lesser studios, because they had so many great stars, BUT IN THIS CASE, THEY EMPLOYED REALLY WONDERFUL ARTISTS TO CREATE BEAUTIFUL ADS! We have included images of the cover of the book and several of the interior pages (and we did not make a big effort to find the best ones, and we really wish we could have pictured them all!). 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 (often hiring very talented and well-known illustration artists), 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!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that this campaign book comes from a newly discovered collection of 15 campaign books, which we are auctioning in 15 individual auctions. They belonged to a man who was a poster artist for a specific theater in the early 1930s, and he would receive these campaign books and then take ideas for posters from them! This meant that sometimes he removed a specific ad or a specific page or pages, so several of these 15 have one or the other defect (or both), which is always clearly noted in the condition section below. While it is sad that they are not in perfect condition, one can also focus on the fact that it is wonderful that he saved these at all, when most theater owners and employees simply threw them out after the movies have played, which accounts for their extreme rarity. Note that not only was he active at a time when many great movies were released, but he also saved some of the books that had the absolute best art, as is immediately apparent when you look at the 15 pressbooks in this collection (in their separate auctions).

Note: We have 19 images of the campaign books in this set, but due to a space limitation, only TEN of the 19 images are displayed above. However, there is a "supersize" link to the right of those images that lets you see the other 9.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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