I picked up this Tarzan Escapes MGM pressbook back in 2022. It is extremely fragile so I hemmed and hawed over how to create images from its pages. I have a 24 inch commercial flatbed scanner, but handling old pressbooks, especially ones that were printed on newsprint paper (high acid content so they deteriorate pretty quickly), is a dicey affair. I eventually worked out a system to move the pressbook around without overly handling it and here you go. I lost a few edge pieces here and there, but all in all, not too bad.
MGM created wonderful pressbooks, but kept the costs down by using paper that wouldn’t last. Of course, who would have thought there would be people like me, eventually, who would collect such disposable movie advertising? Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan were a perfect match for Tarzan and Jane; and the movies turned out to be thrilling and fun at the same time. Check out Cafe Roxy for their blog entry on this movie (https://caferoxy.blogspot.com/2010/10/still-batty-about-tarzan-escapes.html). American audiences didn’t get to see the deleted vampire bats scene and due to a problem with the initial direction, the movie was reshot, so many earlier scenes–some gruesome–were excised. Bummer.
