Pressbooks: Classic Movie Marketing Promotion

Among the many movie collectibles on the marketplace, pressbooks were studio publicity tools that were created for the theatre exhibitors. Though rarely seen by the public except by film collectors, these specialized publications were chock full of alternate poster art for their specific film as well as behind-the-scenes stories on the production, cast and crew. Best of all were the promotional tips for theatre managers on how to pack their theatres with excited fans. Some of these tips could probably get you arrested and sometimes you had to wonder if the pressbook writers were drunk or just testing the gullibility of the exhibitors.

Continue reading

Audie Murphy: Role Model

Audie Murphy plays an angel of death in the semi-allegorical western western, No Name on the Bullet (1959), directed by Jack Arnold

Clint Eastwood certainly carved out his own genre niche as “The Man With No Name” gunslinger of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western trilogy but he wasn’t the first to craft his screen persona as an archetype of the tight-lipped, deadly frontier drifter. Audie Murphy had already perfected the prototype in No Name on the Bullet (1959), a much darker variation on the heroic lawmen the actor usually played in westerns. Continue reading