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Universal 1930-31, the 1930 campaign book ("This is why the whole trade is talking excitedly about Universal"; "First in features! First in shorts! First in first-runs everywhere!") featuring upcoming Universal movies and stars from movies that were planned for production or release by Universal in the coming year. The highlight of the book is, of course, the incredible full-page full-color ad for Dracula (which has the same exact full-color image on both sides; see below). The book has 52 loose pages that all have three punch holes at the spine and they have wraparound cover that goes over them, and then a gold string was laced through the three holes and tied (see our image). This is how the book was created, and this would allow exhibitors to open up the book and pull out the pages of movies they wanted to book (and this might partially explain the extreme rarity of this book, because maybe most of them WERE opened!). In addition to the Dracula ad, there are ads for Blind Husbands (by Erich von Stroheim), See America Thirst (with Harry Langdon), The Cohens and the Kellys Hunting Big Game (in Africa), The White Captive, The Cat Creeps, and many others. There are also pages at the back about Universal shorts and one of them is a wonderful full page on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (which had been created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, but they had left the series in 1929). The pages that are for movies are on a heavier weight paper, and each of them has an ad for one specific movie on the front and back, rather than on facing pages. In all cases, the ad is the same on the front and back, no doubt so that when the page was removed, the ad would show from either side. There is something very interesting about the Dracula ad! For years, I have been searching for this book, because I was told decades ago that the ad for Dracula showed Lon Chaney Sr. billed as playing the vampire! However, this is not correct. What actually happened is that early in August 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. told his father that he wanted to buy the rights to Dracula for Universal to make the movie of it. His father, Carl Sr., agreed, but ONLY if Jr. could sign Lon Chaney to star. No doubt this book was prepared at that time, when they had not yet signed Chaney to a contract. The page has a great image of spooky eyes over a sexy sleeping lady with a man's silhouette behind, and it mentions that "the director is Tod Browning, who gave you The Unholy Three and Outside the Law" (both of which starred Lon Chaney Sr., of course). But they DON'T mention who is playing Dracula, surely because Chaney had not been signed yet. But late in August 1930, Chaney died, and Universal went ahead and made the movie, signing Bela Lugosi, who had played Dracula on the stage. Obviously, one wonders what this movie would have been like had Chaney played the part! As noted above, the page with Dracula has the exact same image on both sides (see our 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! 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, and almost every collector of campaign books agrees that THIS campaign book is the absolute best one there is!
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Important Added Info: As noted above, we have never auctioned this campaign book before. This may be the "Holy Grail" of exhibitor campaign books (the only other one that is similar is the one from the following year, with the great Frankenstein ad, but there are multiple examples of that book surviving, and this is the only example of this book we have ever auctioned).

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