While the non-American pressbooks can be short on pages and promotional and commercial tie-ins, the artwork and printing layout can be quite creative. Here's the French pressbook for Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
See Mary Poppins pressbook Part One.
In this second part of the Mary Poppins pressbook is the incredible merchandising. My favorite is the Louis Marx wind-up, but you will find Gold Key comics, Whitman books, records, puzzles, her carpet bag, Golden Books, clothes, and more. Toy merchandising on a grand scale may have started with the Star Wars franchise, but Disney was years ahead in tying loads of merchandise to its movies.
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At 44 pages, the pressbook for Mary Poppins is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, indeed. Every Disney pressbook I’ve seen has an incredible amount of merchandising and promotion packed into it. While the sequel, Mary Poppins Returns was enjoyable, there’s magic to be found in the original that cannot be repeated. The Sherman Brothers music score is emotionally compelling and the talent-filled chemistry between Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews certainly does make you want to dance. Using the Edwardian period was a smart move, too. P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins author, may have hated the movie, but boy was she wrong. Everything, from the casting to the set designs, and even the animation, created a wonderful film. Well, maybe except for Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent, perhaps, which he did own up to and apologize for (his voice coach couldn’t do one either). But as a kid, I hardly noticed, good or bad. Now that I think of it, it does remind me of when I visited London in 1982 with my father, who couldn’t stop himself from using a really bad cockney accent everywhere we went. If looks could kill, we would have been dead for sure. Had I a magic umbrella and a strong wind to carry me away, I’d have left him toot sweet.
ComicRack reader version: Download Mary Poppins Pressbook (this is a big file at 115MB!) See Mary Poppins pressbook part two.
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It looks like this pressbook for Secret Service in Darkest Africa took quite a trip through the jungle itself. The large format, and at 12 pages, it does still stands out as a promotional seller for this sequel to G-Men vs. the Black Dragon by Republic. This time around the Nazis provide the villainy.
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Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943)
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The Living Dead, also known as The Scotland Yard Mystery, has another mad scientist somnambulizing people (yes, I think I just made this word up!) into a zombie-ish trance to do his criminal bidding. Since my favorite color is purple I couldn’t pass up this pressbook. That poster art is pretty cool too.
ComicRack reader version: Download The Living Dead Pressbook
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I’m sure this pressbook was originally eight pages, but six is all I have for now until I can track down another copy. The East Side Kids were quite a movie franchise, especially if you count their various iterations (Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, Bowery Boys) along the way to Monogram. I will say the East Side Kids were my favorite grouping. The ensemble wordplay and relationships were always fun to watch, even if the story wasn’t top-notch. Sure, Monogram didn’t have a lot of money to kick around, but they made a lot of good, entertaining movies anyway. Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison shows of his hoofing talents in this one.
ComicRack reader version: Download Smart Alecks Pressbook
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To see William Powell at the peak of his detection skills, go no further than The Thin Man series. Interestingly, the pressbook tries to play up the humor angle, given Powell’s Nick Charles whimsy, but this movie left much of that on the dock before it shipped to theaters.
ComicRack reader version: Download Take One False Step Pressbook
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A gangster, a somewhat feisty female reporter, and her not so quick to the draw suitor make up the romantic dramedy of The Public Menace movie from Columbia. For some “swell” angles on promotion, read on.
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Had Mighty Joe Young sold well at the box office, the sequel would have been Joe Meets Tarzan. Sorry to not see that movie get made. Do not hate me, but I tend to enjoy Joe more than King Kong. Both are great movies, but I like the happier ending in this one. Although Ray Harryhausen began stop-motion animation with Puppetoons, this is his first major movie animation that would lead to more fantasy and monster films. I had the pleasure of meeting Terry Moore at a Monster Bash some years ago.
ComicRack reader version: Download Mighty Joe Young Pressbook
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Bruce Eder sums up this movie quite well. As Eder points out, elements of The Invisible Boy, like the super computer that wants to take over the world, would be seen in later movies, like Colossus: The Forbin Project. And the fact that Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet) time travels back to 1957 is so understated, and the scientists and boy’s family so unimpressed by Robby, and the boy’s smarts in putting him back together, it’s kind of funny and sad and intuitive as to 1950s sentiments on child-rearing and American atomic age insouciance and superciliousness rolled into one. At the heart of the story is a boy who just wants to be able to play and have fun. Given that MGM wanted a movie vehicle to re-use Robby, since he cost so much to build, may have rushed the script into less-than-polished as it should have been; but Cyril Hume and Edmund Cooper manage to add some food for thought while keeping it at a juvenile level for the matinee kids.
ComicRack reader version: Download Invisible Boy Pressbook
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Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland team up in another Monogram comedy that mixes the usual 1940s tropes (like gangsters and soda jerks for instance). Darro gets top-billing, Moreland (his “colored crony,” “colored cohort”), barely a nod, though the two made a good team up. The Shake It Up with Soda Store Stunts! is informative. I would have loved to have seen Skello in the theater lobby, for sure.
ComicRack reader version: Download On the Spot Pressbook
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If Larry "Buster" Crabbe is in it, it must be good. He plays a detective after stolen bonds worth two million dollars, which in today's money is a lot more. Red Barry was a comic strip by Will Gould. No relation to Chester Gould who did Dick Tracy. William Gould played Commissioner Tom (again, no relation to either Goulds), and Rita Gould played Mama Sonia (once again, no relation to the other Goulds either). That's a lot of unrelated Goulds. The pressbook has a neat appearance with a centerfold spread of promotional ideas.
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