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First Annual Announcement Fox Talking and Singing Movietone Productions, the 1929 Fox campaign book, sent to theater owners to encourage them to show their new talking pictures. This hardcover book includes 64 pages with one and two-page spreads on Fox's upcoming movies, ALL with sensational art! Some of the movies and stars advertised include The Cisco Kid (with Warner Baxter), Sunny Side Up (Janet Gaynor), They Had to See Paris (Will Rogers), The Hurdy Gurdy Man (George Jessel), The Holy Devil (with Paul Muni), and many more! We have included images of the covers of the book and three of the two-page spreads (and we did not make a big effort to find the best ones!). THE ARTWORK IN THIS CAMPAIGN BOOK IS SOME OF THE ABSOLUTE FINEST OF ANY CAMPAIGN BOOK I HAVE EVER SEEN! 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! In addition, there is a very odd mystery about this exact campaign book. We have auctioned two different versions, one which refers to "upcoming talking features" on the cover, and the other refers to "talking and singing Movietone productions" on the cover. The first is softcover and the second is hardcover. They have similar contents to each other, but they are not the same, with each one having movies that the other doesn't, and the page counts are different. We would think that the hardcover version was made for bigger theaters, but usually the hardcover version resembles the softcover with added material, and that is not the case here, so maybe these two books came out at different times of the year. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here. 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)! 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). 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!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that this campaign book comes from a newly discovered collection of 15 campaign books, which we are auctioning in 15 individual auctions. They belonged to a man who was a poster artist for a specific theater in the early 1930s, and he would receive these campaign books and then take ideas for posters from them! This meant that sometimes he removed a specific ad or a specific page or pages, so several of these 15 have one or the other defect (or both), which is always clearly noted in the condition section below. While it is sad that they are not in perfect condition, one can also focus on the fact that it is wonderful that he saved these at all, when most theater owners and employees simply threw them out after the movies have played, which accounts for their extreme rarity. Note that not only was he active at a time when many great movies were released, but he also saved some of the books that had the absolute best art, as is immediately apparent when you look at the 15 pressbooks in this collection (in their separate auctions).

Note: We have 13 images of the campaign books in this set, but due to a space limitation, only TEN of the 13 images are displayed above. However, there is a "supersize" link to the right of those images that lets you see the other 3.

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