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 Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the classic 1939 Frank Capra political corruption politics romantic melodrama (nominated for the Best Director and Best Picture Academy Award; "A great director creates his most heart-stirring human spectacle!"; "Capra's greatest hit --- the screen at its most inspired!"; "The greatest of all Capra hits!"; "Overwhelming... in its universal appeal!"; about a political innocent from the country who is appointed as a replacement senator, and he learns of political corruption, and tries to expose it, only to find that even the senator he most admires is in on the corruption) starring Jean Arthur, James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart; in his nominated for Best Actor Academy Award role; in the title role as Jefferson Smith), Claude Rains (in his nominated for Best Supporting Actor Academy Award role; as Senator Paine), Edward Arnold (as the corrupt businessman, Jim Taylor, who tells senators what to do), Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey (in his nominated for Best Supporting Actor Academy Award role; as President of the Senate), Porter Hall, Jack Carson, Bobs Watson, and Astrid Allwyn

Here is an image of the pressbook's cover 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!).