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The Mortal Storm, the 1940 Frank Borzage pre-war World War II (WWII) anti-Nazi thriller ("The most exciting picture!"; "The Novel by Phyllis Bottome"; about a professor, his daughter, and her boyfriend in an unnamed European country that is seeing the rise of a fascist group that is taking over the country, and their courageous attempts to both speak out against it and to escape) starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart), Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Robert Stack, Bonita Granville, Irene Rich, Maria Ouspenskaya, William T. Orr, and Gene Reynolds. Note that MGM somewhat courageously made this anti-Nazi movie before the U.S. entered World War II, but they were successfully exporting all of their movies to Germany, and so they attempted to appease Adolf Hitler by not mentioning the Nazis by name, and not identifying the persecuted families in the movie as being Jewish, but that attempt failed, and after this movie was released, Hitler banned MGM movies from Germany! This episode is especially ironic, because in the movie, James Stewart's and Frank Morgan's characters courageously stand up against the Nazis and speak out, even though it means almost certain death, and yet, MGM could not find the same courage as their fictional characters (and meanwhile, over at Warner Bros., they were courageously making anti-Nazi movies like Confessions of a Nazi Spy, made a year earlier!).
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that we have never before auctioned this pressbook!

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 in the mid 1930s (until at least 1940), MGM 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, starting in 1938, they apparently had great paper shortages already, and they economized on their pressbooks by eliminating the color covers and using newsprint for the entire pressbook, which in almost every case has aged greatly and is fragile, if not brittle (see below for the exact condition of this pressbook). After they made these pressbooks, starting in 1941, they economized even more and made their pressbooks even smaller, and this did not change until well after World War II, when they finally regained access to quality paper!

Note: We have 11 images of this pressbook, 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