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Rocket Ship, the 1950 re-titled re-release of Flash Gordon, the 1936 Frederick Stephani science fiction (sci-fi) feature (which was created from the serial of the same name) starring Buster Crabbe (in the title role "as Flash Gordon"), Jean Rogers ("as Dale Arden"), Charles Middleton ("as Emperor Ming"), Priscilla Lawson ("as Aura"), Frank Shannon ("as Dr. Zarkov"), Jack 'Tiny' Lipson (billed as "John Lipson as Vultan"), Richard Alexander ("as Prince Barin"), James Pierce, Duke Ford Jr., and Theodore Lorch. The history of this re-release is very confusing! In 1938, Universal released the serial "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars". As was common, they also released a feature-length movie created from the serial. Universal originally chose to title this feature version "Rocket Ship", but after some marketing material was created, they changed it to "Mars Attacks the World" to capitalize on the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. When Filmcraft re-released the "Flash Gordon" feature in 1950, they used the title "Rocket Ship". At the same time, they also re-released "Mars Attacks the World" without changing the title. Besides the re-use of the "Rocket Ship" title, it is also confusing because some of the movie paper for the 1950 re-releases has the wrong images and/or art (using art from "Flash Gordon/Rocket Ship" on "Mars Attacks the World" and vice-versa) even though they have the correct cast listed. We are happy for this chance to set the record straight on both these matters (but we are not surprised if you find it confusing, because it IS very confusing). Because of this situation, we have this re-release as a separate Description instead of using Flash Gordon.
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that this pressbook for the 1950 re-release of "Flash Gordon" at "Rocket Ship" has double bill ads within it, which prove conclusively that "Mars Attacks the World" and "Rocket Ship" were NOT the same movie being re-released under two different titles, but were actually re-releases of both "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars" and "Flash Gordon". All the confusing occurred because the people who prepared the posters swapped the images from the two movies (see above). Note that we have provided several images from this pressbook, always including the cover and the poster pages, and of course, the winner of this auction will receive the entire single pressbook we are auctioning (plus any supplements or heralds described above)! Also note that this pressbook is complete and uncut! Given that theater owners received pressbooks partly in order to create their newspaper advertising, and quite frequently cut them up for that purpose, it is rare to find a pressbook that IS complete and uncut!

Note that we are auctioning 74 pressbooks in this Part II of our March Major Auction. 62 of those come from a single collector who was attempting to assemble EVERY pressbook from movie serials that were based on either comic book or comic strip characters, and he spent many decades doing so, and he came very close to getting every one there is! These include many that we have never auctioned in all our years of auctioning, and may well never auction them again! This is a very rare opportunity for collectors to acquire these ultra rare pressbooks (which are even more rare than the posters from these same serials, likely because they were sent to very few theaters, and likely most of those theaters immediately threw them out). If one started to try to assemble a similar collection without purchasing any of these pressbooks, they would likely spend many years before they could acquire even a small percentage of them. That is how rare these are!

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Bruce Hershenson,
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