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 Broadway Broke, the 1923 J. Searle Dawley silent melodrama ("Story by Earl Derr Biggers with a notable cast including") starring Mary Carr, Percy Marmont, Gladys Leslie, Dore Davidson, Maclyn Arbuckle, and Macey Harlan

BE SURE TO LOOK VERY CLOSELY AT THAT COVER! The art is by legendary illustrator Al Hirschfeld, but it predates his stage play illustrations by THREE years (he was not yet 21 when he drew this cover), and it is in an entirely different style than that which he adopted a few years later (and which he stayed with for his entire career)! There are other Al Hirschfeld images in the pressbook, but he did not do any of the poster images. This art is so rare that we can find NO examples of it anywhere on the Internet (and most sites make only the vaguest of references to his early work, stating he began full-time in 1924 or 1926, but this work proves otherwise!).

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

 

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!).