Photoplay
Editions & Movie Tie-Ins
The Golden Years [1912-1969] ... Children's
Films
Featuring The Arnie Davis Collection
Children's books are a genre of
book collecting that remains popular but movie books in this category
are often lacking in substance. The text can be minimal for early
readers, sometimes only presenting a portion of the original
novel. The reverse is also evident with books that are visually
attractive to children but require an advanced reader. Many
children's film books are tied to Walt Disney features and are covered
on another website page.
In 1917, J. S. Ogilvie provided
a series of four children's editions that were referred to as Fox
Kiddies Features. The booklets are only a few pages long and but long in
text with interior stills. These are the earliest film editions for
children known. Titles include Jack and
the Beanstalk, Treasure
Island, Aladdin and the
Wonderful Lamp, and a retelling of the Hansel and Gretal
story titled The Babes in the Woods.
Aladdin has eluded this collector for fifty years.
Children's movie editions in
the 1920s were rather scant, options are to include titles that border
on juvenile reading. A major title of this sort would be the
silent film version of The Wizard of Oz
(1925). Oliver Hardy (before pairing with Stan Laurel) plays the
Tin Man role. The Bobbs Merrill reprint has 8 stills and a
colorful dust jacket. This photoplay edition with the jacket is
ultra-rare and likely to sell for several thousand dollars if you can
find one. The British equivalent by Hutchinson (2nd printing) only
has a mention of the film on the jacket front flap but scarce as
well. There are Grosset & Dunlap and Hodder & Stoughton
editions for Peter Pan (1925)
by James Barrie that would require an older reader.
Whitman publishing from Racine,
Wisconsin in the 1930s flourished with the production of Big Little
Books and various booklets that tied into films. There is a series
of eight oversize paperbacks of Shirley Temple films that were big
sellers, that remain rather common, as Shirley collectors are on the
decline. These well-illustrated titles are Dimples
(1936), The Poor Little Rich Girl
(1936), Heidi (1937), Stowaway (1937), Wee
Willie Winkie (1937), Little
Miss Broadway (1938), The
Little Princess (1939), and Susannah
and the Mounties (1939). There are over 100 film
editions with Big Little Books and their kin. Saalfield also
published softcover versions of their regular card-covered
editions. Engel van Wiseman published a series of some 30 film
editions called the Five Star Library. Lynn was another primary
publisher with some of their output being taller than the usually small
editions. These books are mostly juvenile but some titles were
more attractive to children including Alice
in Wonderland (1933), Peck's
Bad Boy (1934), Little Red
Schoolhouse (1934), Dinky (1935),
Dog of Flanders (1935), and Little Big Shot (1935).
Another producer of animated
films (besides Walt Disney), is the brother team of Dave and Max
Fleischer. They created the first sound cartoon and brought us
cartoon characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye. Their venture
into feature films included Gulliver's
Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug
Goes to Town (1941). Gulliver's Travels
is a classic work of fiction by Jonathan Swift and book publishers
abridged his novel to the extent that children could read the
abbreviated story. There are no less than 12 movie editions for
this film title with the majority being published in London and Sydney.
In the 1940s through the 1960s,
the publisher Simon and Schuster dominated children's books
with the introduction of Big and Little Golden Books. These card
cover editions were popular and reprinted into oblivion with some
titles. In general, for Little Golden Books, one has to find the
letter "A" on the last page of the text at the bottom near the spine
(often having to tweak the spine to see it. This designates the
first printing. Reprints followed the alphabet with some titles
going into double letters. The first printings of Big Golden Books
usually had an "A100A100" inside the front cover bottom left. Film
titles were always Walt Disney productions with the single exception of
Tom Thumb (1958)
In the late 1950s, Golden Press reissued most earlier Simon and Schuster titles. The vast majority of their new film ties were Walt Disney films except for the Little and Big Golden Book editions of Gay Purr-ee (1962). Rand McNally and Wonder books also provided some children's film books. Other examples include Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Heidi and Peter (1952), Misty (1961), The Ten Commandments (1956), and A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969).
