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Paramount 1931-1932, the 1931 French Paramount campaign book ("La Nouvelle Production 1931-1932"), created by Paramount Pictures in 1931 to promote their upcoming releases in France. The book includes 68 pages with mostly one-page spreads on Paramount's upcoming movies and stars, including truly magnificent artwork! Some of the movies and stars advertised include Rien Que La Verite (with Meg Lemonnier), Rive Gauche (with Henry Garat), Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (with Fredric March), Marius (with Raimu), Quand Te Tues-tu (with Robert Burnier), Dishonored (with Marlene Dietrich), City Streets (with Gary Cooper), Smiling Lieutenant (with Maurice Chevalier), Daughter of the Dragon (with Anna May Wong), Taboo (directed by Murnau), and much, much more! Note that this was a time when Paramount was creating French movies for French audiences, and there are ads for some of those movies, and of course, there is a lot of promotion for Maurice Chevalier, the great French star, who was under contract to Paramount! There is a four-page section on Paramount shorts, including a great full-page ad for Max Fleischer cartoons, with artwork showing Fleischer himself drawing animation art! Note that, because Paramount at this time was one of the very leading studios, and had many of the biggest name stars and directors, and also had lots of money to spend, they made lots of great movies this year, and they also were proposing many unbelievable movies that never got made (see some of the examples above; perhaps it was because the stars became too famous too quickly to make so many movies, or maybe it was because of the Great Depression, but this book has lots of never-made movies that one could only dream of!). Paramount sometimes did not use as much full-color artwork as the lesser studios, because they had so many great stars, BUT IN THIS CASE, THEY EMPLOYED REALLY WONDERFUL ARTISTS TO CREATE BEAUTIFUL ADS (some of the artwork is signed, one by "G. Arou", "W. Mahon", and "Briol", and these are really great artists!) We have included images of the cover of the book and six of the interior pages (and we did not make a big effort to find the best ones, and we really wish we could have pictured them all!). Note that even though this campaign book was sent to many theater owners, it appears that very few examples have survived (and French editions of campaign books are incredibly rare!). 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 some of the movies listed in this book may never have been made at all, and some had their titles changed, and some had their cast or director changed! 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 this is a hardcover campaign book. Paramount, being a leading studio, would prepare both larger versions and smaller versions of most of their campaign books (apparently giving the larger sized editions to the biggest theaters), and sometimes they would make both hardcover and softcover editions for the same reason. In the case of this campaign book, we don't know if it was also created in a softcover edition, because only once seen another example of this ultra rare campaign book, and that one was also a hardcover!

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