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Radio's Book of Miracles 1930-1931, the 1930 RKO Radio Pictures campaign book, sent to theater owners to encourage them to show RKO movies. The book includes 42 pages with one and two-page spreads on RKO's upcoming movies and their best stars. Some of the movies and stars promoted include Amos 'n' Andy (an incredible two-page art spread of them by an NBC Radio microphone, plus two more pages!), Dixiana, Cimarron, Half Shot at Sunrise (Wheeler & Woolsey), The Silver Horde, Leathernecking, Escape (written by A.A. Milne, author of "Winnie the Pooh"), A Going Concern (Wheeler & Woolsey), two pages of ads for RKO shorts (including a large great artwork image of W.C. Fields), and much more! Note that many of the pages have signed artwork, by many different (quite talented) artists, including Fredric C. Madan, Ralph Ilican, Carl Godwin, Patterson, Dan Content, Armand Seguso, H. Heyer, and most of these artists have several different pieces in the book. Note that, because RKO at this time did not have the biggest name stars, they relied on movies with very lurid and sensational material, and they created images for this campaign book that are both extremely colorful and often downright sexy! We have included images of the front cover of the book and many of the two-page spreads (but we wish we could have photographed the entire book, because there are so many great images!). THIS IS REALLY ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE NICEST CAMPAIGN BOOKS I HAVE EVER SEEN IN TERMS OF ART! We have only pictured a small portion of the book, but many of the ones that are not pictured are just as nice as the ones that ARE pictured!. 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! 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). 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)! 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! Finally, note that we once auctioned an example of this book that had a brown cover with "RADIO PICTURES" on it, and nothing else. We also three times auctioned versions without that cover. We don't know if it was made both ways, or if the ones without the cover had their cover removed, or if they were removed from exhibitor magazines. Certainly, the color cover is far more attractive than the brown one!
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