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Exhibitors Herald, one of the main trade magazines sent to movie theater owners in the 1920s (it was first published in 1915). In early 1928, this magazine was bought out by the leading magazine, Moving Picture World, and for a short time, publication continued with both names on the cover, but soon publication of this magazine ceased, and Moving Picture World became really massive, having the combined advertising from both publications. There were only a few issues published with both names. Each magazine measured approximately 9" x 12", and each contained around 70 pages. Each weekly issue would be filled with profusely illustrated articles about upcoming movies, statistics about box office grosses of current releases, and sometimes articles about coming developments in motion picture technology, and sometimes sections illustrating how theaters advertised current movies. Of greatest interest to collectors are the dozens of advertisements (most full-page) from all of the major studios! Many of these ads were full-color, and the studios spent a great deal of time and money creating them, for it was through these exhibitor magazines that the studios gained bookings for their upcoming releases, which was the direct income they received from those movies (by contrast, the posters they created helped theaters take in more money, but that did not directly benefit the studios, except when they owned the theaters, or if higher grosses resulted in more bookings). Note that these exhibitor magazines were ONLY sent to theater owners, and the general public never had a chance to buy them. But most theater owners treated them like old newspapers, throwing them away after the movies had played. Consequently, they are extremely rare, especially those from the 1920s and 1930s! Note that we do not have the time to list the contents of each magazine we are selling, but we have pictured the cover, and, in most cases, an interior single page, and an interior 2-page spread. We tried to pick out some of the more interesting interior pages, but we did not spend much time doing so! Each of these magazines, which were NOT printed on newsprint, and were printed on quality paper, is packed with very interesting visual and written material, almost all of which has not been seen since the date the magazine was published. We doubt anyone who buys these magazines will be disappointed by the content!. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

Important Added Info: IMPORTANT! The studios would send copies of campaign books to many theater owners, and it appears that very few examples have survived. IN ADDITION TO SENDING THEM TO THEATER OWNERS, THEY WOULD SOMETIMES HAVE AN EXTRA PRINT RUN OF THE INTERIOR PAGES RUN OFF, WHICH WOULD BE THEN SENT TO AN EXHIBITOR MAGAZINE AND INCLUDED AS AN ADDITION TO A REGULAR ISSUE OF THAT MAGAZINE! I have seen many examples where people carefully removed ALL of the portions of the magazine (the front and back cover plus the non-campaign book interior pages), and they have then sold the remaining material as a "campaign book", which it basically is (and could be done with this magazine!), but realize that it is from the over-run that was created so that it could be included in the magazine. Please do not bid on this item unless you have read the above very carefully, and realize you are getting a magazine containing a campaign book, and not the bound campaign book that was created in a separate print run (and of course, you are receiving more material than just the campaign book!). In the case of this magazine, it contains the 56-pages of the Fox 1926-27 campaign book ("A standard of business in the realm of entertainment"), which had 95 pages in it, and those pages were larger, measuring 9 1/2" x 15 3/4". This smaller version of that book includes 56 pages with one and two-page spreads on Fox's upcoming movies. Some of the movies listed include "The Lily", "What Price Glory", "Fig Leaves", "7th Heaven", "The Return of Peter Grimm", "Cradle Snatchers", "The Family Upstairs", "The Monkey Talks", and many more! There are also many single pages devoted to specific top directors and stars that Fox had on contract at this time, people like Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Howard Hawks, and many more! Note that while many of the pages have signed artwork, by many different (quite talented) artists, and that many of the pages have art by an artist who signed his work as "Usabal" (his name was Lotte Usabal, and he was a well-known illustration artist of that time period). Note that, because Fox was one of the foremost studios at this time and had some of the biggest name stars, they prepared an ultra-elaborate campaign book and they created images for this campaign book that are extremely colorful! Note that Fox did something very unusual (and quite nice) with this particular campaign book. Many of the pages have "tipped in" images, which means they were printed on separate sheets of paper and then one-by-one glued in to those specific pages! This was done with both photographs of some of the stars and directors, and some of the Usabal artwork. But please remember that what is bound in this magazine is 56 pages and the standalone campaign book had 95 pages, so there is that clear difference between them.

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