A Brief History of Photoplay Editions
Publishers have noted for hundreds of years that illustrations enhance
their printed words, in that the reader can relate to the artist's
rendition along with the author's mental imagery. With the
advent of photography, publishing houses recognized the further
clarity that the photo could provide and, in the late 1800s, the first
true "Photo-Play editions" were produced.
Plays
or novelizations of plays were illustrated with photos of the play's
"first run". These early "play" tie-in books were primarily published
by Grosset and Dunlap. The peak years were 1900-1915; the format
dwindled in numbers thereafter. "Play" Tie-In books were
revitalized as recently as the early 1960s through an attractive
series published by Random House and featuring many Hollywood
notables. There are over 100 titles in this format published
before the advent of “feature films”. These photoplays deserve special
mention as they were the natural predecessors to the Movie Tie-In
book. Grosset and Dunlap even advertised these books as "dramatized
novels".
"Play"
Tie-In books were revitalized as recently as the early 1940s through
an attractive long running series published by Random House and
featuring many current and future Hollywood notables. Many
Random House plays are true first editions and some were subtitled
Fireside Theater Book Club Editions.
With
the emergence of more lengthy productions in the movie industry, the
term "photoplay" took on a new meaning. Now the public could see
a production on the movie screen as opposed to the theater stage and
"photoplay" became synonymous with today's concept of "feature
film". The popularity of a movie fan magazine Photoplay
(1911-1980) only added to the connection of this term to
films.
The appearance of the first MTI is a matter of speculation. The
publisher Edward J. Clode produced in 1913, the first crossover
tie-in. This edition of What Happened to Mary contained stills
from both the stage and movie versions. The serial movie of this
MTI was released in 1912. Grosset and Dunlap (undated) reprinted
this title close to the 1913 date and this reprint may have been their
first, in relation to Grosset & Dunlap reprinting an existing
book, as an MTI.
The earliest known United Kingdom film as an MTI is an undated
(possibly as late as 1920s publication) edition by Greening, for the
1913 United Kingdom production entitled A Message to Mars. This
title will also be contending for the earliest fantasy / sci-fi
entry. The stills depicting Martians are a far cry from the
special effects of today's movie industry.
Serial films were predominant in the early MTIs. The movie going
audience desire to know the outcome of those "to be continued" cliff
hangers, before the next episode appeared in the theatre, probably
accounted for good sales. Bobbs Merrill Co. published the MTI of
The Adventures of Kathlyn
(1913) in 1914 and was promptly reprinted by Grosset and Dunlap with
additional stills. Hearst International published MTIs of
the serials Perils of Pauline (1914),
Exploits of Elaine (1915) and
Romance of Elaine
(1916). The Hearst books were issued in the United Kingdom by
Hodder & Stoughton though not illustrated with stills, all are
quite scarce.
Grosset and Dunlap continued its output with The
Million Dollar Mystery, The
Trey of Hearts and The
Master Key, all arriving in 1914. The serials were
the first movie novelizations as other MTIs appearing in the teens
were usually reprints of existing novels. The year 1914 saw
Grosset and Dunlap producing its earliest deluxe MTI. The
Eagle's Mate with Mary Pickford boasted a colored photo
dust jacket, a colored photo on the book front cover and interior
stills, including double spread endpaper stills. The caption
opposite the title page heralded what was to become common practice in
the early MTIs:
"The unusual success of the film version of The
Eagle's Mate has prompted the issue of this special
photo play edition of the book, and the publishers desire to express
to the Famous Players Film Company, who produced The
Eagle's Mate as a photoplay, their thanks and appreciation
for permission to use the illustrations that appear in this
edition".
Dillingham was another early, though short lived, publisher of MTIs. Traffic in Souls (1913) and Diamond From the Sky (1915) are two
examples. A.L. Burt Company began a long involvement with MTIs
with early titles such as the Rex Beach novels The
Spoilers (1914) and The
Barrier (1917). Burt also provided an early fantasy
title with a youthful Antonio Moreno, The
Island of Regeneration (1915). The teens also saw the
first paperback or "pulp" like MTIs with editions of She
and Camille published
by J. S. Ogilvie Company in 1917. Ogilvie also produced a children's
series of early MTIs with soft covers including Jack
and the Beanstalk (1916) and Treasure
Island (1916).
Two other books deserve special mention circa 1915, those being the
first MTIs of Alice in Wonderland.
This is the first known instance of Grosset & Dunlap publishing a
deluxe and more common version. The oversized deluxe boasts a
full photo dust jacket with three color scenes, interior artwork,
color stills and numerous black & whites. This edition was
issued with a “Gift Box” and the only known example of such by Grosset
& Dunlap. The regular sized G&D has a color still pasted
on front cover with similar dust jacket. The DJ flaps mention
these editions as being the first filming of this Lewis Carroll
classic.
The publisher most evident in the MTI field developed its stronghold
in this era. Grosset and Dunlap had extensive reprinting rights and
though MTI output dwindled during World War I, afterward the company
rebounded nicely and escalated production throughout the 1920s.
A dust jacket ad, circa 1920, refined the advertising format that
popularized Grosset and Dunlap MTIs: "The success of moving picture stars in the production of famous
novels is inducing many people to purchase the books
themselves. If you like the play you will want the book to
keep permanently. All are illustrated with scenes from the
photoplay".
Grosset and Dunlap and A. L. Burt, referred to " photoplay editions"
in their advertising as early as 1915. By the late 1920s Grosset
and Dunlap ads took this approach: "Your favorite pictures will mean so much more to you if you will
read the books from which they were produced".
A. L. Burt's advertising circa 1925, made the following "sales pitch",
appealing to our mental imagery:
"A photoplay is made doubly enjoyable after one has read it in
story form. The characters are as charming as old friends in
new clothes. And one tingles with pleasure as one's flights of
imagination become actualities on the screen. The reverse is
equally delightful. When one reads the story of a photoplay
after seeing it, the vivid mental pictures and the strikingly real
characters that come to life become irresistibly fascinating.
Try it and you will read the story version of every picture you
see".
The connection between reading books and attending the photoplay
showing was heavily advertised in magazines. From 1925-1934
magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Country Gentleman and
Needlecraft often ran full page ads that featured MTIs. For the
price of a magazine subscription, one could receive free books and the
connection with movies was heavily promoted. Bookstore displays must
have been quite eye catching to window shoppers. Book publishers
were happy to publicize "photoplays" as sales of their MTIs produced
good profits. The "Roaring Twenties" were the peak years for
"the photoplay edition". Most titles were priced at 75 cents and
were discounted by the larger stores. Other companies that entered the
field include Renard, Efrus & Bennett, Macaulay, and
Jacobsen-Hodgkinson. Renard published a short series of
classical literature titles in 1925 that included the Lon Chaney
vehicles, Treasure Island (1920) and Oliver Twist (1922) with sixteen
and twenty stills respectively. The Westbrook Company provided
at least one softcover MTI in 1926, Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl
with Madge Ballamy. Douglas Fairbanks, through his own
publishing company was responsible for small paperback editions
of The Three Musketeers
(1921) and Robin Hood (1922).
A
lengthy series of MTIs with paper covers and similar in appearance to
"digests" were produced by Jacobsen-Hodgkinson Company under the logo
"Popular Plays and Screen Library" (later "Screen Hit Novels").
Ninety odd titles were published, sold at 10-15 cents and often
contained tinted stills. In the late 20s, Jacobsen-Hodgkinson became
Jacobsen and their MTIs contained no interior stills, though the
colored photo/front covers were an appealing substitution. The
series is the first publisher to heavily utilize novelizations rather
than novels. Many of the screenplay writers were given credit
and the stories written by unidentified “hacks”. The titles from
the early 30s are tough to locate.
Some titles of merit include Old
Clothes (1925), The Cat
and the Canary (1927), The
Road to Mandalay (1926) and Tillie's
Punctured Romance (1927). A limited number of these
same MTIs were published by Jacobsen with hard covers and photo dust
jackets. Examples are The
Divine Woman (1928) with Garbo and Don
Juan (1926), the first feature film with a synchronized
musical score.
A similar series to Jacobsen was published in Sydney, Australia during
the 1926-27 and called "Movie Stories". This series was
primarily novelizations as well, though origins from novels were more
common than Jacobsen. Photos on both sides of the covers were
standard with no interior stills. These digest size booklets
totaling 48 pages were visual treats and now quite scarce.
Examples include Faust (1926),
The Road to Mandalay (1926),
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
and The Man Who Laughs
(1928). There are some 50 titles advertised in this series.
Macaulay was another periodic contributor to the MTI market with
notable titles including Beyond the
Rocks (1922) starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson
and She Done Him Wrong (1933
), which may be the only Mae West hardback MTI. Another
competitor who appears to have been cut down by the Depression was the
Efrus and Bennett Company. They published at least five titles
including Gold Diggers of Broadway
(1929) and Footlights and Fools
(1929). Milton Bradley Company published two oversize, deluxe books
that are worthy of special mention, Evangeline
(1919) and Lorna Doone
(1922). Other oddities include The
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1922) by Donahue Company and
another oversize edition by Renard, of the Jackie Coogan film Little Robinson Crusoe (1925),
complete with some extra photos of Jackie doing his exercises.
The mid 1920s gave rise to MTIs from the United Kingdom and its
colonial interests, Canada and Australia. There are a few United
Kingdom MTIs from the teens but they are the exception. Movies
represented were a mix of UK and US productions. In general
books from the UK were smaller and more often only mention "The Book
of the Film" on the dust jacket. UK publishers of MTIs are difficult
to find in the United States. Paper drives and bombing during
WWII in England destroyed countless MTIs and in general the prewar
titles should be considered scarcer than United States counterparts.
It's interesting to note that many important US film productions, such
as The Sheik (1921), The Unknown (1927), Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington (1939),
Conflict (1945), A Night
in Casablanca (1946) and The
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) were only published
in the United Kingdom.
The largest UK publisher was Readers Library in London. This was
the first UK publisher to popularize the "Film Edition" concept
(1923-1935). Their editions were small sized (6 3/4" by 4 1/2")
and most often featured a colorful movie artwork dust jacket with
written mention of the movie in the editor's comments. There are
over 200 Readers Library MTIs and they were frequently
reprinted. The Spy
(1928), The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1923) and Ben Hur (1926)
are examples where reprints had new artwork jackets.
Readers Library also provided eight interior stills in about one half
of their later 1920s production. "Illustrated Editions" include
London After Midnight (1927),
The Man Who Laughs (1928) and
The Jazz Singer (1927).
Readers Library editions exist of several early Alfred Hitchcock
films, including The Farmer's Wife
(1928), The Lodger (1926)
and Blackmail (1929).
Another Readers Library edition worthy of mention is the rare first
edition of the classic film sequel Bride
of Frankenstein (1935).
In typical British fashion, Readers Library advertising made an
interesting point: "The series comprises classics and modern copyright novels.
Furthermore, in order to meet the undeniable call for good
literature associated with the film, it includes such novels as form
the basis of each new and important film, publication coinciding
with the pre or general releases in every instance."
The UK publisher Hutchinson, designed editions similar in format to
the Grosset and Dunlap MTIs. Scaramouche
(1923), The Ten
Commandments (1924), Phantom
of the Opera (1925) and the science fiction classic Metropolis (1927) are
examples. A rare second edition of The
Wizard of Oz (1925) was advertised by Hutchinson with only
a mention of the film on the front flap of the dustjacket.
Hutchinson also issued digest paperback versions in their popular "6
d" series of novels including Atlantide
/ Queen of Atlantis (1932) and The
Keeper of the Bees (1935).
There were also MTIs published in Canada and Australia and often
containing stills not found in US editions, though on a much smaller
scale than the UK based publishing houses. McClelland and Thomas
Allen were occasional Canadian publishers with near identical versions
of Grosset and Dunlap photoplays. Movie
Stories was a series in the mid/late 20s published in
Australia. These 48-page paperback booklets number some 30 titles and
include the 1926 issues Faust and
Temptress. Angus and
Robertson, a London based publisher, was a pioneer hardback publisher
in Australia, providing a forum for the country’s emerging film
industry.
By the late 1920s, MTIs were at their zenith with Grosset and Dunlap
leading the field. The economic collapse during the Depression
stunted the rapid growth and ultimately altered MTI formats. In
the early 1930s, Grosset and Dunlap books generally had four stills
rather than the usual eight found in the 1920s. Some only had
stills on the endpapers to further cut costs. MTIs with only a
dust jacket tie-in became more common and often the jacket used
artwork rather than photos.
It's important to recognize that the novelizations appearing in the
1912- 1930 era often represent films "lost" for viewing to modern
historians and movie lovers. These storylines and photo
illustrations comprise a significant portion of the available
historical record and offer glimpses to many cultural and social
events of this era.
In 1933 the Whitman Company published the first movie Big
Little Books. These MTIs were cheaply produced on poorer
quality paper but were loaded with stills, often over 100.
Colored photographs on the covers were standard and other companies
such as Saalfield, Lynn and Engel Van Wiseman contributed their
version of the BLB format. Notable examples include Les
Miserables, A Tale of Two
Cities and David
Copperfield all in 1935. Several Tarzan titles were
available only in this format, including Tarzan
the Fearless (1933) and Tarzan
Escapes (1936). Movie Big Little Books and their kin
continued through the early 1940s and number over 100 movie titles.
From about 1931 through the early 50s the UK publishing firm of Hodder
& Stoughton issued MTIs as part of their "Yellow Jacket" series
which referenced the color of the dust jacket. Early examples
include The Scarlet Pimpernel
(1934) and The Squeaker
(1937). There were periodic "paper" editions as well, i.e., Daddy Long Legs (1931) and Good-Bye Mr. Chips (1939).
The late 30s produced some of the finest children's editions, with the
vast majority being the feature animated films of Walt Disney.
The various oversize dust jacket editions for Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio
(1939) and Fantasia (1940)
are all highly collectible.
The year 1939 is often cited as an unsurpassed year for quality film
production and the MTI industry was not going to miss out.
Grosset and Dunlap and Macmillan provided oversize editions of Gone With the Wind with color
stills. Bobbs Merrill Company offered The Wizard of Oz with endpaper
photos. The Dodd Mead Company offered several deluxe movie
editions including The Man in the
Iron Mask, Wuthering
Heights and The Hunchback
of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo.
1939 also gave rise to an expanding paperback book industry and
several Pocket Book MTIs appeared that only mentioned their movie
counterparts, such as the two-volume set for Victor Hugo's Hunchback
of Notre Dame and The
Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Paperbacks with
movie dust jackets were appearing in the "White Circle Film Edition"
series by Collins, a London based publisher. The book front
covers repeated the dust jacket photo and The
Lady Vanishes / The Wheel Spins is a 1939 example of a
classic Hitchcock film.
The UK publishing would often be a year behind the US due to differing
film release dates. 1940 gave rise to UK editions of Gone
with the Wind & The
Wizard of Oz by Macmillan & Hutchinson
respectively. It is interesting to note that despite wartime
restrictions, Hutchinson published no less than four “Wizard” editions
compared to the US output of one. These editions are now the
most sought after and the hardbacks are superior to the US Bobbs
Merrill edition. The dust jacket and book cover production still
evident on one of these editions are of the primary actors but not
from the finished picture, which is another first.
MTIs started appearing more regularly in the school systems in the
late thirties, with the Globe Company inserting stills in their
abridged editions of literary classics such as Treasure
Island (1934), Drums Along
the Mohawk (1936) and Wuthering
Heights (1939). Generally, these books were published years
after the film's release and are listed because they include many of
the classic movies of the 30s and 40s. These books complete with
their study guides and questions for the student dropped off in
production in the early 1960s.
During WW2, MTIs were advertised with the G.I. in mind. "Send this
book to a boy in the Armed Services anywhere for 4 cents postage" was
a common sight on dust jackets. There were resurrections of the
classic style MTI with a series of "Motion Picture Editions" by Forum
Books (Tower/World) with interior stills and photographic
jackets. Some examples include The
Big Sleep (1946), Kitty (1945)
and Adventure (1945).
In 1945 Grosset and Dunlap provided a short series entitled the "Film
Classics Library'' including And Then
There Were None and The
Bells of St. Mary’s.
Many wartime books were published on cheap pulp paper to conserve
resources and they tend to age quickly. Despite the wartime
restrictions, the above-mentioned series are among the best to appear
in this field and are quite attractive. In reviewing the UK
publishing of the WW2 era, it's easy to see the diminished product as
a consequence to the paper conservation drives.
The majority of hardback MTIs in the 1940s are of the dust jacket
tie-in variety. Grosset and Dunlap continued to dominate the
market. World (Tower/Forum), Triangle and Sun Dial Press were
lesser producers. Tower provided a line of mystery titles including The Lodger (1944), Lady
of Burlesque (1945) and Hangover
Square (1945). Grosset and Dunlap developed a line
called "Madison Square Books" with jacket tie-ins, including Sergeant York (1941), Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) and The
Spoilers (1942). Many of these titles appeared in
regular and slightly larger sizes with the regular perhaps being a
"Book Club" edition. Some of these smaller editions lost the written
credit to the movie, while retaining the movie photo. Triangle
Books altered between artwork and photo jackets more frequently than
other publishers and examples of their output include Rebecca
(1940), Pride and
Prejudice (1940) and Background
to Danger (1943).
From 1938 to the early 50s, Ward Lock in London published at least 12
deluxe MTIs that can't be beaten as a series or as a visual
delight. The premier title The
Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn contained
no less than 16 full page color stills and 100 black and white
photos. In an oversized format, these books also had color dust
jackets with the book front cover repeating the jacket illustration.
Later titles scaled down to eight color and 80 black and white photos.
Other titles include Scrooge (1951),
King Solomon's Mines (1950)
and three Lassie films.
At least one title was reprinted with fewer stills (Robin
Hood) and this title and Stanley
and Livingston (1939) were also issued as oversized
paperback versions.
The 1940s also saw a growing market for paperback books, which
decreased demand for hardbacks. By the end of the decade most MTIs
available were paperback. The gradual disappearance of the movie
studio "star system" altered advertising through books. The
country's fascination with TV ultimately created another alternative
to reading which left cheaper paperback editions as the most
marketable option.
Pocket Books was one of the earliest publishers of paperbacks,
providing MTIs of The Philadelphia
Story (1941) and Dr.
Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940) with Edward G. Robinson. The
Pocket Book edition of The Good Earth
(1937) was issued as an un-numbered edition in its first appearance
and is considered the first true paperback (pocket sized). This
book contains a reference to the movie in the rear text about the
author, Pearl Buck. When available, one might expect to pay
between $2,000 and $3,000 in collectible condition.
Armed Services Edition paperbacks appeared in 1944-46 and their oblong
format often gave written credit to their movie counterparts on the
back covers. Some notable exceptions featured a movie photo on
the front cover that appears as a book dust jacket, Double
Indemnity (1944 ) and Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ( 1932 ) are examples. The
edition for Woman In The Window
(1944) shows the book jacket front from the World published version.
The UK series by Hollywood Publications and later World Film
Publications (circa 1945-52) were thin paperback booklets, often with
20 interior stills. Advertising with these books further
popularized the UK "Book of the Film" concept. Some notable
examples include A Night in
Casablanca (1946), Humoresque
(1947) and Dead Reckoning (1947). Later editions were more
oversized softcovers and include the Hitchcock films Under
Capricorn (1949) and Stage
Fright (1950). There were some occasional
hardback editions with movie dust jackets such as A
Guy Named Joe (1944) or Hamlet
(1948). There are about 75 titles in this series.
Bantam Books were big publishers of MTIs and one of their titles, The Pearl (1947), contains
interior stills. Other Bantam titles include Sorry
Wrong Number (1948), Winter
Meeting (1948) with Bette Davis and The
Red Pony (1948) by John Steinbeck. Avon Books
infrequently offered MTIs in the 1940s and examples are Stage
Door Canteen (1943) and The
Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). Bart House
produced a short series of MTIs with endpaper stills. The
Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), a Harold Lloyd comedy, is
an example. Century published several paperbacks with movie
ties. Some of their "digest" sized titles are quite difficult to
come by, such as The Dark Corner
(1946) with Ronald Colman, Singapore
(1947) and Fallen Angel
(1946).
The UK publisher Pan began a long MTI relationship in the late
40s. Early issues were often only a back cover credit.
Their MTI production progressed to become the most visually appealing
and perhaps the most collected UK paperback publisher.
Throughout the 1950s the paperback MTIs maintained their predominance
and usually had a photo or artwork tie-in on the cover. They
were not the visual bonanza found in so many of the earlier
hardbacks. The exceptions, among the best available in this
decade, were published mostly by Avon and Signet. Both
publishers had a tendency to accentuate the female anatomy in their
stills or artwork, a typical graphic style of the paperback field
during this era. Some examples of the Avon output include Boy On A Dolphin with Sophia Loren, Valerie and Pickup Alley, both with Anita
Ekberg, all appearing in 1957. Avon titles often had stills on
the same page as the text (similar to some of the Jacobsen titles in
the late 1920s). This produced a "newspaper" look to the photos.
Signet would often run 4-8 pages of stills in the center of the book
and perhaps are best known for featuring many of the plays of
Tennessee Williams, including Cat On
A Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly
Last Summer (1959). Marilyn Monroe made some MTI
appearances for Signet in the films The
Prince and the Show Girl (1957) and Some
Like it Hot (1959).
Pocket Books (Cardinal), Signet and Bantam Books continued as primary
providers of United States MTIs in the 1950s. Other publishers
included Perma Books, Popular Library and Pyramid. The mid 50s
saw Gold Medal issuing an increasing number and identical editions
were appearing in the UK with the same logo. Some scarce
paperback originals appear as Gold Medal editions including the Louis
L'Amour titles Hondo (1954)
and The Tall Stranger (1957).
In 1954 Dragon Press in the UK published Creature
from the Black Lagoon novelized by Vargo Statten (John
Russell Fearn). Both a digest sized paperback and a hardback
version were issued. Nice artwork of the creature is repeated on
the paperback cover and hardback dust jacket. Recent contacts in
the UK report the digest as being the "rarest" paperback published in
the country. The definition of "rare" can be debated at length
but copies are rarely offered and likely priced in the $3-5,000 range.
Other United Kingdom publishers were also active, most notably Digit,
Fontana, Panther, and WDL. Some UK publishers had their US
equivalents as books were often near identical i.e., Bantam/Corgi and
Dell/Mayflower.
The UK Pan paperbacks are sought for their beautiful art covers and a
visual balance was often achieved through a rear cover photo.
Sam Peffer (aka "Peff") was a popular artist for Pan and his covers
are actively collected today. Collectible examples of his work
include Boy On A Dolphin
(1957) and The Barbarian and the
Geisha (1958) and The Man
Who Finally Died (1962).
In 1952 Pocket Books, the "grandfather" of US paperback publishing,
issued a few UK "Pocket Book" editions with interior stills and color
covers. Titles available include the Robert Taylor/Deborah Kerr movie
Quo Vadis and Pickwick
Papers.
In Australia the publisher Horwitz provided MTIs including collectible
titles such as The Five Pennies
(1959) with great artwork of Louis Armstrong or Too
Hot to Handle with Jayne Mansfield and The
Hands of Orlac, both in 1960.
A footnote for the Shirley Temple collector regarding hardback MTIs is
needed. In 1959, coinciding with the Shirley Temple TV show for
children, Random House issued a series of five books. These MTIs
highlighted six of the best films of the actress as a child.
They boasted a color photo front cover, duplicated on the dust jacket,
and many black and white photos. With collector interest in Shirley
Temple, it's important that these titles not be confused or equated
with Temple MTIs of the original movie periods (1930s). Only on
the dust jackets, where her TV series is mentioned, can one readily
detect the publication era.
The 1960s continued to predominate with paperback MTIs. In
comparison the UK publishers (as was the case in the 50s) produced
many more hardback editions but these were still greatly outnumbered
by the paperback versions. United States publishing provided
some hardbacks that were Book Club editions and copied the paperback
edition, The Graduate (1967)
and 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) are examples. The first edition of 2001 is noted as such
and is a fairly expensive MTI that should not be confused with the
Book Club Edition version.
The US paperback publisher Lancer provided MTIs for American
International Pictures, that featured the aging horror stars Boris
Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and the youngster Vincent
Price. Titles include The Raven
(1961) and Comedy of Terrors
(1963). A short series of paperback Monarch Movie Editions
appeared in the early 60s and focused on horror and mature
themes. Brides of Dracula
(1960) and Jack the Ripper
(1958) are prime examples.
There are several scarce and expensive movie paperback editions from
the 1960s. These were primarily from movies that featured nudity
and/or bloody gore, the beginnings of the "splatter films"
period. Novel Books had a short series of MTIs that included the
classic gore titles The Blood Feast and
Two Thousand Maniacs both in
1964. Herschell Gordon Lewis was the director and has developed
a following similar to Ed Wood Jr. Greenleaf Classic provided Orgy of the Dead (Ed Wood Jr.) and
Queen of Blood in 1966 which
are difficult to find. Pendulum Press in 1968 published a series
of six titles referred to as "Pendulum Pictorials". Titles
include films directed by the now "cult" personality Ed Wood Jr.
Bye, Bye Broadie and Raped in the Grass were typical of
the Wood product. Novel Books and Greenleaf Classics were not
easily purchased outside of adult bookshops, contributing to condition
issues and rarity.
UK publishing in the 60s kept pace with the US paperbacks and may have
surpassed them in total numbers. UK book publishing firms seemed
more interested in maintaining "Film Editions" and in general the UK
editions from the 50s-60s era are more visually appealing. US
publishing was now more likely to use the "blurb" tie-in rather than
stills or attractive artwork.
For the ever loyal "horror" fans, United Kingdom MTIs from the 60s
provide many titles not published in the United States. Hammer
Films was often the movie production company and sought-after titles
include Revenge of Frankenstein
(1958) The Terror of the Tongs,
Fall of the House of Usher
(both 1960) and the Pan "Hammer Horror Omnibus" volumes in 1966 and
1967. Penguin Books in the UK provided the MTIs for the Quartermass series refitted by
Hammer for the theaters, from the 1950s TV productions.
A final comment on the paperback format of MTI will look at the series
by Olympic Foto-Reader which numbers 14 titles (1967-68). These
are X-rated and were found in the adult book shops of the day.
As one might surmise these books were heavily illustrated and titles
like The Acid Eaters and The Love Rebellion exemplified the
1960s time period. It is not unusual to find these books with a "saw
cut" through the top of the book. Some titles are questionable as to
movies being produced vs. staged models.
With this historical overview concluded, it is past due to give
special consideration to the seminal work in this field. In
1975, Emil Petaja published the book Photoplay
Edition, written from the perspective of a collector, who
had witnessed much of the MTI history. This first attempt at listing
titles and describing the genre is noteworthy for its full-page
reproductions of over ninety stills from MTIs. His description
of origins further develops the major publishing firms and the
commentary, in general should be of great interest to collectors. Emil
Petaja's research provided the basis for the expanded listing found in
this guide. The author extends a special "thanks" to Emil for his
inspiration. At this time, copies of Photoplay
Edition continue to show up, as an affordable addition to
your reference library.
As the collectibles book market has grown, new authors have emerged to
describe various aspects related to MTIs. In 1994 Moe Wadle
provided The Movie Tie-In Book
(Nostalgia Books), which is a bibliography of United States paperback
MTIs. In 1995 Randall Larson authored Films
Into Books (Scarecrow Press), which has an extensive
listing of novelizations from both movies and TV.
2002
saw the publication of Photoplay Editions & Movie Tie
Ins, the Golden Years 1912-1969 by Arnie Davis (Mainely
Books) and Photoplay Editions: A Collector’s Guide
by Rick Miller (McFarland), both publications adding to the work of
Petaja.
In 2004 Thomas Mann authored Horror and Mystery Photoplay
Editions and Magazine Fictionizations (McFarland).
Mr. Mann has continued with collector publications that focus on the
film editions for London After
Midnight including the scarce French version containing
story changes. The output by authors Miller and Mann are still in
print.
All of these books would be recommended as further reference material.