Photoplay
Editions & Movie Tie-Ins
The Golden Years [1912-1969] ... Juvenile
Films
Featuring The Arnie Davis Collection
From the classics to
adventurous tales from the prolific pens of Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic,
Edward Ellis and Henty, the field of juveniles would become an ever
growing market into the 1930s and beyond. Capitalizing on the
popularity of a wide and growing audience, publishers would cater to
many genres from the classics of Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland and
Moby Dick ... to adventures in the American West with the Lone Ranger
... to far away lands with Tarzan and Bomba the Jungle Boy.
After his golden, record setting Olympic swimming career, Johnny
Weismuller would star in 12 Tarzan feature films between 1932 and 1948
[six with MGM and six with RKO] along with gracing the cover of two
Whitman Big Little Books, The Tarzan of
the Screen ["with
summaries of Tarzan the Ape Man and Tarzan
and His Mate], and Tarzan Escapes [1936 MGM film as a
movie tie-in to Tarzan Triumphant]. These Whitman editions were
lavishly illustrated with several dozen movie stills.
By 1949, Johnny Sheffield would step up from the role of Boy
[son of Tarzan] in 8 of the former films to a starring role as Bomba
the Jungle Boy in 12 feature films from 1949 through
1955. Bomba the Jungle Boy had begun as a
popular juvenile series of 20 titles published by Cupples & Leon
over a dozen years [1926-38]. The U.S. publisher decided to add a
photo wraparound band as they reissued the books in 1949 with a new
dustjacket design. Across the pond, there was also a movie tie-in dust
jacket edition issued by Ward, Lock.
To review juvenile publications, one must look back to the
emergence of Whitman’s Big Little Books and their kin (Engel van Wiseman, Lynn & Saalfield) in the
1930s. Pocket sized and sometimes thick books that sold well and kept tweens and teens reading.
Most film editions were First Edition novelizations and had considerable text, also many more movie
photos compared to the usual photoplay edition. There are more than 100 movie editions in this format.
Whitman continued their dominance in the juvenile movie editions with standard sized issues
in the 1950s and 60s. Card covers continued and most titles were Walt Disney films both animated
and live action. A few titles included dust jackets such as Treasure Island,
Alice in Wonderland
and Peter Pan. The interiors were frequently line drawn artwork illustrations
and not the film
photo bonanza found in earlier times.
This time frame also saw Scholastic Book Services expand their school-based market in the paperback
field with numerous movie tie-ins. Some issues were larger in size, similar to trade or digest
paperbacks. Some Scholastic titles included classic films from the 1930s such as
David Copperfield,
this being the first instance of paying such homage to earlier films.
