Photoplay Editions & Movie Tie-Ins
The Golden Years [1912-1969] ... Adventure Films

Perhaps this subject of photoplay editions and movie tie-in books is the most subjective.  Adventure can conjure up numerous films or novels that crossover into multiple subject areas.  Books and films allow us to visualize characters who take on death-defying risks.  Characters who portray right over wrong, who promote family values, and who occasionally recover from moral lapses.  Let’s take a broad brush and explore adventure films.

Silent serial films often with ‘cliff hanging’ endings to episodes brought adventure to the screen in weekly installments and novelizations of several are available as photoplay editions.  The Hearst International Library was a book publishing venture of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.  Weekly serial films were often simultaneously published by chapters in various magazines owned by the Hearst consortium.  During the serial’s run in the theaters, the chapters were published in hardcover form as First Edition film novelizations.  Examples include The Perils of Pauline, The Exploits of Elaine (both 1914), The Romance of Elaine, and Runaway June (both 1915).  All are difficult to find and near impossible to locate as a digest paperback edition but do provide so much more detail for the reader.  Recently a collector friend has shared that The Adventures of Kathlyn, a serial novelized by Harold MacGrath is also a paperback edition with both being published by Bobbs Merrill in 1914. 

There were two silent Tarzan films released in 1918 from the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Romance of Tarzan and Tarzan of the Apes both featuring Elmo Lincoln.  The British publisher Methuen gave a glancing nod to the films in their Tarzan series of Cheap Reprints.  Thus, began a long parade of Tarzan films and book connections.  Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), and Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) are other worthy examples.  The Whitman Big Little Books were the most frequent publisher of Tarzan films.

A contemporary competitor of Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan was Buster Crabbe in the film King of the Jungle from the novel The Lion’s Way by C. T. Stoneham.  This 1933 film was tied to book publishers in London and New York City.  The London film edition is titled Kaspa the Lion Man.  When one imagines adventure, jungles can certainly come to mind.

Many adventure literature classics have been filmed multiple times with movie tie-ins.  Examples include Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson with film books for 1920, 1934, and 1950 productions with Long John Silver being portrayed by Charles Ogle, Wallace Beery, and Robert Newton respectively.  Moby Dick by Herman Melville has been filmed at least 3 times with fiction counterparts beginning with The Sea Beast in 1926, John Barrymore reprising his role in Moby Dick as Captain Ahab in 1934 and Gregory Peck in 1956.  James Fenimore Cooper’s film editions for The Last of the Mohicans have appeared in 1920, 1936, and in 1947 as The Last of the Redmen.

The Ward Lock (London) publishing firm from 1938-1953 provided the most deluxe series of oversize film books with most having several full pages of color plates and from 60 -100 black and white stills.  Their first publication was the film edition starring Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).  There are three color stills on the dust jacket with 16 interior color plates and 100 black and white film images.  Other notable examples include Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Three Musketeers, and King Solomon’s Mines (1950). 

As seen in many subject pages within this website, the film editions circa 1946-1969 are primarily paperbacks.  A few of the numerous adventure tie-is from this era include The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Black Rose (1950), The Big Sky (1952), Ivanhoe (1952), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Harry Black and the Tiger (1958), Barabbas (1961), The Sand Pebbles (1966) as well as the motorcycle trek in Easy Rider (1969).

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Last Revision:  April 12, 2021 3:11 PM