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 Lost Special, the 1932 Henry MacRae railroad train mystery serial ("12 Chapters of Terrific Thrills and Mystery"; "From the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle") starring Frank Albertson, Ernie Nevers, Cecilia Parker, Francis Ford, and J. Frank Glendon. Note that Ernie Nevers was a legendary football player in his day who appeared in four movies in cameo roles as football players. He was nicknamed "The One-Man-Team", and he once scored 40 points by himself in a single game (six touchdowns and four points after touchdowns), a record that has never been broken (and likely never will be). He was a charter member of the Football Hall of Fame, but he is sadly forgotten today. Note that for the first release of this serial, some items are credited to Universal, and some are credited to "Adventure Pictures", but the ones from Adventure Pictures are <b>NOT</b> from a re-release! This serial was made during the time when Universal was using Adventure Pictures as the production company for its serials. There are many such Universal/Adventure Pictures serials from 1925 to 1932. A collector tells us that Adventure Pictures was a wholly owned subsidiary that Universal used to distance themselves from the increasingly low-brow serials, and their desire to be viewed as a more high-end producer of features.

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!).