eMoviePoster.com

As many of you know, I, Bruce Hershenson, owner of eMoviePoster.com, have collected pressbooks (and related movie paper like studio yearbooks) for over 30 years, and I have the world's foremost collection of such material. I thought I would share one item with you each week, the type of items you almost surely have never seen before, and which might not come up for sale for DECADES!

So below is the pressbook from The Captain's Kid, the 1936 Nick Grinde & Tom Reed family relationship juvenile comedy ("Pirates ahoy in a hit that's a joy!"; "The singing kid's kid now becomes 'The Captain's Kid'") starring Sybil Jason (in the title role), May Robson, Guy Kibbee, Jane Bryan, Fred Lawrence, Dick Purcell, and Mary Treen. Note that Sybil Jason was born in South Africa, but was a singing and dancing child prodigy in England from the age of 2. When she was 6, Jack Warner saw her perform, and signed her to a contract hoping she could be a child star for Warner Bros. to equal Shirley Temple at 20th Century-Fox. However, after a few movies, including starring opposite Al Jolson in "The Singing Kid", she did not deliver the hoped for results, and Warner Bros. did not renew her contract in 1938. Daryl Zanuck signed her at 20th Century-Fox, putting her with Shirley Temple in "The Little Princess". She was supposed to have a major role in "The Blue Bird", opposite Shirley Temple, but most of her scenes were cut from the movie (perhaps because it was feared she would "upstage" Shirley Temple, who was "getting old"!), and she "retired". In 1947, at the age of 18, she married a Navy man, and they had a child and were married for 58 years until his passing in 2006, and she passed away in 2011 at the age of 83!

Here is an image of the pressbook's covers and two interior pages:

   

Each week I will showcase a different pressbook (or related item) from my collection (so in just 20,000 weeks or so, I will have shared the entire collection with you!). And remember to check out our previous Cool Items of the Week in our Cool Item of the Week archive (which is fully searchable!).