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Lion's Roar, a deluxe soft cover trade magazine printed by MGM from 1941 to 1947 (sometimes monthly and sometimes bi-monthly) to promote their "current" movies and stars. This was at the time when MGM was far and away the leading studio in Hollywood, and where other studios made similar publications once each year (referred to as "campaign books" or "studio yearbooks"), MGM spent the extra money to do this publication either every month or every two months! Because each Lion's Roar issue was published so frequently, each issue could focus on just those movies that MGM was releasing during that month or two, which meant that instead of devoting just one or two pages to each movie, they would devote 5, 10, or even 20 pages to a single feature! Each issue was an over-sized deluxe trade magazine with varying numbers of pages, but each issue always contains much art, photos, and written information that can't be found anywhere else, and I don't know if very much of it at all is available anywhere! Most issues were at least 100 pages, and many had a few color pages (sometimes elaborate fold-outs), but always a large number of black and white illustrations and photos throughout. Because this was the time that Al Hirschfeld and Jacques Kapralik were quite active in creating artwork for MGM, many issues have art by one or both of these great illustrators. While each issue had many articles about the current MGM feature movies and stars, every issue also had a section about the current MGM shorts and cartoons (which at that time included ones made by the great Tex Avery)! These magazines (like studio yearbooks) are quite rare, and are rarely offered for sale or auction! Note that until 1941, MGM, like the other studios, had in past years made annual "campaign books", which presented an overview of their films for the coming year. However, in 1941, they started a bi-monthly (sometimes monthly) publication called "Lion's Roar", which measured 11 1/4" x 14", and each issue was a square-bound softcover book, telling about "what was new" at MGM in that past month! The first issue was 40 pages, but the page count grew over the next few years. The publication continued until the Spring of 1947, and MGM published a total of 32 different issues, plus three very rare "supplements" (which measured the same size, but only had a small number of pages, because they were added information to the issue that had already gone to press).

Important Added Info: As noted below, these supplements to Lion's Roar are far more rare than the regular issues. Of the three supplements, we have only previously auctioned two of one and one each of the other two (but that one was the same exact issue auctioned two times, so we have only previously auctioned one of each of the three). Now we have been consigned one each of the three supplements, and we are auctioning them in three separate auctions. Note that, in addition to the regular issues of this magazine, they issued three supplements (January 1943, May 1944, and "Anniversary" 1944). These were obviously printed because after three of the regular issues went to press, the studio decided that they had other movies they wanted to cover as well, so rather than wait an entire month, they created these three supplements. Offered here is the very rare "January 1943 supplement", which was a supplement to the December 1942 issue, which is certainly confusing! The supplements are many times more rare than the regular magazines, which themselves are quite rare, and this is likely almost nobody saved them (unlike the regular issues, the supplements did not have color covers).

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