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Columbia Pictures 1934-1935, the 1934 Columbia Pictures campaign book, sent to theater owners to encourage them to show Columbia movies. The book includes many pages with mostly two-page spreads on Columbia's upcoming movies. Some of the movies and stars promoted include Frank Capra (their top director), Lady Beware, Claudette Colbert, Man Proof, I Confess, Boris Karloff in The Black Room Mystery, and a great two-page cartoon spread (featuring Krazy Kat and Scrappy), and much more! There is a wonderful 2-page spread called "26 Star-Studded Two Reel Comedies", and it has large headshots of Langdon, Clyde, Errol, and Catlett, along with many sexy ladies, but what is really wonderful is that there is great artwork of The Three Stooges in sports outfits with Curly grabbing a scantily clad girl! Note that because Columbia at this time did not have the biggest name stars, they relied on movies with very lurid and sensational material, and they created images for this campaign book that are both extremely colorful and often downright sexy! We have included images of the front cover of the book and eight of the two-page spreads (and we did not make a big effort to find the best ones!). THIS IS REALLY ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE NICEST CAMPAIGN BOOKS I HAVE SEEN IN TERMS OF ART! Many of the movies do not even have stars' names on them (because the stars were not that major at all, but Columbia made up for it with really fantastic art, and many of the ones that are not pictured are just as nice as the ones that ARE pictured!). 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 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). Also note that, as was often the case with these campaign books, some of the movies advertised were either never made, had their titles changed before they were released, or were made with different casts than those announced in the campaign book (I do not have time to research the titles in this campaign book to see which had changed titles or were never made, but if anyone has more information about any of these, please e-mail us and we will post it here)! 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 16 images of the campaign books in this set, but due to a space limitation, only TEN of the 16 images are displayed above. However, there is a "supersize" link to the right of those images that lets you see the other 6.

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