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RKO Radio Pictures 1932-33, the 1932 campaign book sent to theater owners to encourage them to show RKO movies. The book includes many pages with one and two-page spreads on RKO's upcoming movies and their best stars. Some of the movies and stars promoted include "King Kong", "The Most Dangerous Game" (Leslie Banks), "The Sun Also Rises" (Constance Bennett), "The Animal Kingdom" (Ann Harding & Leslie Howard), "The Moon and Sixpence" (John Barrymore), "Thirteen Women", "Bring 'Em Back Alive" (Frank Buck), and many more! Note that, because RKO at this time did not have the biggest name stars, they sometimes relied on movies with very lurid and sensational material, and they created images for this campaign book that are both extremely colorful and often downright sexy! We have included images of the front cover of the book and many of the two-page spreads (but we wish we could have photographed the entire book, because there are so many great images!). While this book is not quite as nice as some of the earlier RKO ones, because there are not as many two-page full-color spreads, but that is offset by having King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game! We have only pictured a small portion of the book, but many of the ones that are not pictured are just as nice as the ones that ARE pictured! 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! 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). 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)! 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 RKO prepared this campaign book in the usual way, in softcover version. But they also chose to have it printed as a special supplement to the leading exhibitor magazine of the day, Motion Picture Herald. The only difference between that supplement version and the printed softcover version is that the brown cover of the softcover version was replaced by a Motion Picture Herald cover, and it also had additional pages of Motion Picture Herald magazine bound into the back of it. Otherwise, the pages of the magazine supplement version is exactly identical to the softcover version (because they were printed from the same plates and at the same time)! It is impossible to tell if what is offered here is either the magazine supplement version of this campaign book or the regular softcover version (which had brown covers), because this has no covers, so it could be either.

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