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Auction History Result

2b0129 IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD pressbook 1939 James Stewart, Claudette Colbert, ultra rare!

Date Sold 5/10/2022
Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price.


An Original Vintage Theatrical Movie Pressbook (pb; measures 14" x 19 1/2" [36 x 50 cm]; 17 pages) (Learn More)

It's a Wonderful World, the 1939 W.S. Van Dyke (billed as "W.S. Van Dyke, II") romantic fantasy screwball comedy ("Screen Play by Ben Hecht"; about a private detective who is wanted by the police after getting too involved in a murder investigate, and he goes on the run with a somewhat wacky poetess who he initially kidnaps, but over time, she comes to fall in love with him!) starring Claudette Colbert, James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart; collectively billed as "Claudette Colbert and James Stewart in a wonderful picture"), Guy Kibbee, Nat Pendleton, Frances Drake, Edgar Kennedy, and Ernest Truex. Note that this movie has many familiar elements that screenwriter Ben Hecht borrowed from movies like The 39 Steps and The Thin Man, but the movie is quite entertaining and the two lead stars' great "star power" makes this a very entertaining movie!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.
Important Added Info: Note that we have never before auctioned this 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 been consigned. In this set of auctions, most of the ones we are auctioning are larger pressbooks, 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. Many of these are ones we have either never auctioned before or only once auctioned before, sometimes many years ago. 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 to good, NO CUTS. Note that we solely give an overall grade to these rare pressbooks, and tell you whether it is complete and uncut. However, 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. 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. This particular pressbook's pages are extremely fragile and are separated at the spine from being in a bound volume.
Learn More about condition grades

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