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Moving Picture World ("The Organ of the Photoplay and Allied Interests"), one of the main trade magazines sent to movie theater owners starting in the early 1900s, when movies were in their infancy ("Founded in 1907 by J.P. Chalmers"). Each magazine measured approximately 9" x 12", and each contained many pages (in the early years, issues would range from 50 to 100 pages, and in their peak years, issues could be 150 to 200 pages, and sometimes even more!). 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 (every issue of this magazine in the 1920s has a great section called "Selling the Picture to the Public", which shows lots of images of theater fronts and theater windows, and other great information about how theaters advertised movies in those years, and sometimes this section is a dozen or more pages!) 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 (this magazine does not have a "table of contents", and of course, the most interesting part of the magazine is the great illustrated ads), but we have pictured the cover, and several interior 2-page spreads. 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!

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 44-page Universal campaign book ("Universal's Supreme Achievement") featuring images and information about upcoming Universal movie releases for the 1927-28 season including: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni), Show Boat, Les Miserables, The Man Who Laughs (Conrad Veidt), The Chinese Parrot (second Charlie Chan movie by Paul Leni), and many, many more! This campaign book has some of the very best color art of any campaign book ever, and we wish we could reproduce all of the ads, because they are just so incredible! Another great highlight of this wonderful campaign book is the full-page ad announcing "Something NEW from Universal!", which was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was being created by Walt Disney for Winkler Productions, and the art of Oswald is likely the very first time he ever appeared anywhere (since the first cartoon was not produced for several more months), and the art is almost surely by Ub Iwerks. Also note that, as was often the case with these campaign books, it is likely that 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! Note that we have never auctioned the standalone version of the Universal 1927-28 campaign book, so this might be the only way to acquire it (bound into this magazine).

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Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775