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RKO Radio Pictures 1938-39, the 1938 spiral-bound Australian campaign book sent to theater owners to encourage them to show RKO movies. The book includes one and two-page spreads on RKO's upcoming movies and top stars. Some of the movies and stars listed include Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, The Marx Brothers (in Room Service), Virginia City, The Saint series, a page on Walt Disney showing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, an ad for Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in an unnamed movie (which would end up being Gunga Din, but not made until 1939), and many more! There are a number of artwork ads, and quite a few are especially distinctive, and some have images that we have never seen before. We have included images of many of the two-page spreads (but we wish we could have photographed the entire book, because there are so many great images!). 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! 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 we have never previously auctioned this Australian campaign book. We did one time auction the U.S. version of it, which is virtually identical (including the spiral binding), and we also auctioned a U.S. version that was removed from a magazine and was not spiral-bound. The U.S. version with the spiral binding had a problem with the red cover, where the red ink used on the cover bled terribly onto the hands of anyone holding it, and apparently that was true of this Australian one as well, because it has had an added cover that was glued over the original red cover (prior to the spiral binding!). We guess that they didn't have time to reprint the whole thing and were trying to find a way to salvage it.

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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