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Motion Picture ("First Screen Magazine - Founded 1911"; "Oldest, Largest and Best Movie Magazine in the World."; "First Best & Largest"; "First and Best"; "More copies sold than any two other movie publications"), one of the many movie magazine sold to the public. It began publication in February 1911 as "The Motion Picture Story Magazine" (it measured 6 1/2" X 9 1/2"), and exactly three years later, it changed its name to simply "Motion Picture Magazine" (and some time around that time, it adopted the larger size that would be standard for decades). Each issue features a great full color cover of a leading star of the day, plus lots of interior publicity stories about current stars and movies with many color and black and white images throughout. Also, in every issue are many wonderful vintage ads, some in color and some in black and white, and sometimes the ads can be just as much fun as the original stories and pictures. Of course, some of the ads are from movies that were about to open, and in the early days of eBay, people would remove those full-page ads and auction them by themselves, and they would often sell for $10, $20, or more, just for a single movie ad removed from a magazine just like this! Note that in May of 1932, the magazine slashed its price from 25 cents to 15 cents, but even that did not help in the height of the Depression, and in late 1934, Motion Picture combined with "Golden Screen" magazine, and for a few issues, the cover said "Motion Picture combined with Golden Screen", but they soon dropped that. Also, at some time in the early 1950s, this magazine changed its name to Motion Picture and Television Magazine, because of the growing influence of television. Finally, note that this magazine advertised it self as "First, Best, and Largest". Photoplay started publication in 1909, but it was not the later movie magazine format, so it is likely on that technicality that the publishers of this magazine claim they were "first"!

Important Added Info: Note that Motion Picture magazine jumped in on the 3-D craze in 1953, when they published this special issue called "3 Dimension Pin-Ups". It came with a pair of "magic 3-D viewing glasses" and cost 50 cents. We bet they sold lots of magazines, but we don't know if there are anymore issues. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here. Also note that we have provided a picture of the front cover of the magazine, and pictures of interior two-page spreads (including the table of contents page if there is one; but we didn't make much effort to find the best ones!). These images should greatly help you judge the overall condition of the magazine, and the contents page lets you know exactly what articles and stories are contained in this particular issue. Please know that these magazines are sealed in bags and are ready for shipping, and we cannot answer any questions about them or look through them for you, so please bid (or do not bid) based on the images we have provided.

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