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The Phantom, the 1943 B. Reeves Eason World War II (WWII) Nazis-in-Africa fantasy superhero serial ("The Amazing Phantom comes to thrilling life on the screen!"; based on the famous newspaper cartoon strip) starring Tom Tyler (in the title role as The Phantom/Godfrey Prescott), Jeanne Bates, Kenneth MacDonald, Frank Shannon, Ernie Adams, and Ace the Wonder Dog ("as 'Devil'"). Note that this serial stayed fairly faithful to the classic comic strip, with Tom Tyler's father being The Phantom and him taking over the hero's role when his father is killed, just as in the comic strip, where there was a long line of Phantoms going back many, many years, where each son assumed the identity of his father, so that the naive natives thought it was a single immortal man! Tyler had starred two years earlier in "The Adventures of Captain Marvel", so he was no stranger to the genre, and he was a cowboy star for many years, and he was physically suited for the demanding role of The Phantom! Being that this was 1943, naturally, The Phantom fought the Nazis, in Africa! Also note that Ace the Wonder Dog had his first role in 1938's "Blind Alibi" (playing a seeing eye dog). He appeared in 15 movies stretching over 8 years. If anyone knows more about Ace the Wonder Dog, please e-mail us and we will post it here.
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that this pressbook is extremely rare. We have never auctioned it before! Also note that pressbooks were prepared prior to a movie being released. Often, changes would be made in a movie advertising campaign (billing of actors, different images, etc.), and the theaters would print up special supplements that they would send out with the pressbooks that had already been printed. These supplements are very rare, far more rare than the pressbooks themselves! Some pressbooks would have no supplements, some would have one, and some would have several. Note that we have provided several images from this pressbook, always including the cover and the poster pages, and of course, the winner of this auction will receive the entire single pressbook we are auctioning (plus any supplements or heralds described above)! Also note that this pressbook is complete and uncut! Given that theater owners received pressbooks partly in order to create their newspaper advertising, and quite frequently cut them up for that purpose, it is rare to find a pressbook that IS complete and uncut! Also, note that a knowledgeable collector believes that Glenn Cravath created the art for this item. However, we cannot be 100% certain. If anyone has definitive proof such as signed original art, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

Note that we are auctioning 74 pressbooks in this Part II of our March Major Auction. 62 of those come from a single collector who was attempting to assemble EVERY pressbook from movie serials that were based on either comic book or comic strip characters, and he spent many decades doing so, and he came very close to getting every one there is! These include many that we have never auctioned in all our years of auctioning, and may well never auction them again! This is a very rare opportunity for collectors to acquire these ultra rare pressbooks (which are even more rare than the posters from these same serials, likely because they were sent to very few theaters, and likely most of those theaters immediately threw them out). If one started to try to assemble a similar collection without purchasing any of these pressbooks, they would likely spend many years before they could acquire even a small percentage of them. That is how rare these are!

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