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Auction History Result 2a0401 PHILADELPHIA STORY pressbook 1940 Hepburn, Grant, Stewart, exploitation section, ultra rare! Date Sold 4/17/2022 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original Vintage Theatrical Movie Pressbook (pb; measures 14" x 20" [36 x 51 cm]; 20 pages). Also included is an "exploitation section" that has 26 pages. (Learn More) The Philadelphia Story, the classic 1940 George Cukor (nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for this film) Pennsylvania romantic love triangle wedding comedy ("Howl with your happiest Hollywood stars!"; "Broadway's howling year-run comedy hit of the snooty society beauty who slipped and fell - in love!"; "Based on the play by Philip Barry"; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; about a divorced socialite who is planning to remarry and have no press coverage, but her ex-husband is jealous, and he arranges through blackmail to have a reporter and a photographer attend, and many complications ensue) starring Cary Grant ("...he's a smoothie!"), Katharine Hepburn (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film; "...she's a wild red-head!"), James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart; winner of the Best Actor Academy Award for this film; "...he's a devil in the moonlight!"), Ruth Hussey (nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this film), John Howard, Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash, and Virginia Weidler. Note that James Stewart won the Best Actor Academy Award for this film and many feel it was to repay him for not winning the year before for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but that is especially ironic, because he was given the Oscar over Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath, who surely deserved it! Also note that this movie was remade in 1955 as the musical High Society, with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra in the lead roles. NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography. Important Added Info: Note that we have never before auctioned this pressbook! Not only that, but at this time, MGM made some elaborate "exploitation sections" for some of their major movies, and those were printed on a quality paper stock and show everything available for the movie except for the posters, which were shown in the regular pressbook. This auction contains BOTH the regular pressbook AND the exploitation section, which is just as rare (if not more rare) than the regular 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 auctioned. In this April Major Auction, we are auctioning 32 REALLY excellent and extremely rare ones, "the best of the best", 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. 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, 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! Condition: fair, NO CUTS. The pressbook is complete and uncut. However, all of the pages of each MGM pressbook from this period were printed on a newsprint that was exactly like what was used in newspapers at that time (see above), and it almost always ages terribly, resulting in incredibly brittle insides. On this particular pressbook, all of the pages of the regular part of the pressbook are on newsprint (including the covers) and they are incredibly fragile, and there is paper loss in the bottom right corner of the cover, with small paper loss around the edges. The exploitation section is printed on much better paper and is in pretty nice condition, except that the original staples are missing, so all the pages are loose. You can view our multiple images of the covers and the interior pages that should give you a good sense of the pressbook's condition. Learn More about condition grades 
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