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RKO Radio Pictures 1934-35, the 1934 campaign book sent to theater owners to encourage them to show RKO movies. The book includes 68 pages with one and two-page spreads on RKO's upcoming movies and their best stars. In previous years, RKO had made similar campaign books with wonderful art, but this year they went really crazy and the cover is an unusual tri-fold double cork cover with a faux copper embossed seal (that looks like metal!). There are also a large number of fold-outs, some die-cut, and the fold-out for "Radio City Revels" is an incredible pop-up with the pop-up being Radio City Music Hall and The Rockettes! There is even a page that has an embossed circular coin-like image of Katharine Hepburn! We can see why they didn't do this after this year, because they surely spent a fortune on it! Some of the movies and stars promoted include "The Little Minister" (Katharine Hepburn), "The Age of Innocence" (Irene Dunne & John Boles), "The Gay Divorce" (Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers), "She" (H. Rider Haggard), "Anne of Green Gables" (Anne Shirley), "Three Stand Alone" (Johnny Weissmuller), "The World By The Tail" (the working title of Top Hat starring Astaire & Rogers), William Powell, Wheeler & Woolsey, and many more! Note that many of the pages have signed artwork, by many different (quite talented) artists, including Armand Seguso, Russell Patterson, Campbell, Elcock, and more. Note that, because RKO 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 many of the two-page spreads (but we wish we could have photographed the entire book, because there are so many great images!). THIS IS REALLY ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE NICEST CAMPAIGN BOOKS I HAVE EVER SEEN IN TERMS OF ART! We have only pictured a small portion of the book, but 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!
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