eMoviePoster.com
Auction History Result 8d0117 RKO PATHE PERSONALITY GROUP foil campaign book 1931 fantastic art of best female stars & more! Date Sold 4/4/2021 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original Vintage Campaign Book (measures 10 3/4" x 15 1/4" [27 x 39 cm]; 49 pages) (Learn More) RKO Pathe Personality Group, the 1931 RKO/Pathe Studios campaign book, sent to theater owners to encourage them to show RKO/Pathe movies. The book includes many pages with mostly two-page spreads (including four that fold out and open up into four cool posters), on each of RKO/Pathe's upcoming movies or biggest stars. Some of the movies or stars listed include Constance Bennett (including The Common Law), Ann Harding (including Devotion), Helen Twelvetrees (including A Woman of Experience), Ina Claire (including Rebound), Bill Boyd (Suicide Fleet), Eddie Quillan (Whoop-te-do Kid), Aesop's Fables (Van Beuren cartoons), and more! We have included images of the front cover of the book, and many of the two-page spreads (plus images of all four of the fold-out posters). Note that many of the pages have signed artwork, but unlike most campaign books, it seems likely that a single artist, Walter Seaton, did either all or almost all of the artwork for this extraordinary book! 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! 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)! 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). 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! NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography. Important Added Info: Note that we have sold many unusual studio publications, but this wonderful book is one of the coolest ever, because it has four elaborate large fold-out posters that are bound into the book along with regular pages! We have seen loose examples of the four fold-out posters (which are printed on both sides), and it is possible that RKO/Pathe separately distributed just those four fold-outs, or it is possible the loose examples we have seen were removed from examples of this book. Condition: good to very good. The studio had the unusual idea of covering most of both covers with something like aluminum foil, and that likely looked great in 1931, but it did not age well, because there is loss to the foil on both covers. Otherwise, the book is in pretty nice condition, and most surviving examples of this book would surely have the same type of cover damage. Learn More about condition grades 
Postal Mailing Address:
Bruce Hershenson, P.O. Box 874, West Plains, MO 65775. (For our UPS or FedEx address, click here) phone: +1 417 256-9616 fax: +1 417 257-6948 E-mail: Contact Us Hours of Operation: Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM & 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (CST) |
|||||||||||||
