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Tarzan Escapes, the 1936 Richard Thorpe & William A. Wellman African jungle adventure fantasy horror action thriller ("It's New! It's Amazing 2 years to produce"; the second sequel to the hugely successful "Tarzan the Ape Man"; "Based upon the characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs") starring Johnny Weissmuller (in the title role as Tarzan), Maureen O'Sullivan (as Jane), John Buckler, Benita Hume, William Henry, and Skippy (the chimpanzee who plays Cheeta). Note that I thought that I knew a lot about early Tarzan movies, but it turned out I did not know any of the important facts about this movie! Unknown to me, the movie was actually filmed in 1935, and there is a major subplot involving Tarzan, pygmies, and vampire bats, basically making it a horror film! The studio hated the movie, and hired a new director to re-film it in 1936, and they junked all of the 1935 movie EXCEPT for the major vampire bat scene in the cave at the end, and they made drastic changes to the plot (added the tree house home, no great apes, no Jane rescuing Tarzan at the end, etc.)! The 1936 version was previewed and mothers complained that the movie was too violent and scary for their kids, so the sanitized version that exists on video today was released to some 1936 theaters. However in 1954, when the movie was re-released, MGM used the uncut negative with the vampire bats. Sadly, when the film was made available to TV and for 16mm rental in the 1960s, MGM again used the censored negative, so there is now no complete print of the 1936 "director's cut" (and of course, the 1935 version is lost as well). But this is just a summary. You should read the collector's entire blog on this at http://caferoxy.blogspot.com/2010/10/still-batty-about-tarzan-escapes.html
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that we have only previously auctioned one example of this pressbook, and that was 24 years ago, when it sold for $995!

Note that in December 2021, we were consigned a truly remarkable collection of pressbooks (the first 37 were auctioned in our December Major Auction, and the most expensive one sold for $17,500!). In our regular auctions since, we have auctioned hundreds more from this collection. Now we continue to auction more of these pressbooks, which is absolutely the finest collection of pressbooks we have ever been consigned. In this set of auctions, most of the ones we are auctioning are larger pressbooks, mostly 11" x 15" or larger. Some of them were folded at one time, but they were stored unfolded for many years, so we left them unfolded, and unless the new owner requests otherwise, we will send them unfolded, because re-folding them would likely lessen the condition. Many of these are ones we have either never auctioned before or only once auctioned before, sometimes many years ago. These were collected decades ago, which was the only time that many of these could be found, and after these auctions are over it may be years (or decades!) before some of these are offered again. They ARE that rare! Note that pressbooks from the 1930s are almost never found in great condition, and some of them (especially those printed during World War II, including all the MGM ones from that time) are printed on newsprint, and are hard to find in even lesser condition. We have several images from each pressbook. We have given each an overall grade, and ask that you look at our images to get a good sense of the condition of that pressbook, because, since they have many pages, it would take forever to describe their condition in detail. However, EVERY one of these pressbooks is complete and uncut!

Note that MGM, being the foremost studio of the 1930s felt they did not need to create wonderful posters for their movies, because they had so many top stars, so often their 1930s posters have simple artwork against a white background with a duotone photo of the top stars! However, they knew that they needed theater owners to book their movies, so they spent quite a bit more money on their pressbooks, often making them close to window card size, with an exact color recreation of the window card image on the cover of the pressbook, and the posters on the back cover in full color, and often a full-color sample herald, "tipped in" to the inside of one of the covers! However, they economized on the interior on these large pressbooks and used newsprint for the interior pages, which in almost every case has aged greatly and is fragile, if not brittle (see below for the exact condition of this pressbook).

Note: We have 11 images of the pressbooks in this set, but due to a space limitation, only TEN of the 11 images are displayed above. However, there is a "supersize" link to the right of those images that lets you see the other 1.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775