1920s Cinema from Royal Books, Inc.

N.p.: N.p., 1925. Vintage double weight photograph of New Haven's Olympia Theatre, circa 1925 with "Vincent Studio" in print on lower right. The Olympia Theatre, located at 140-144 Temple Street in New Haven, Connecticut, opened on September 13, 1915, seated 2,373 and was equipped with a Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ. It changed its name when purchased by Paramount Studios… Read more

Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1925. Draft script for the 1926 film. Based on the 1924 novel "Escape" by Alden Brooks. File copy rubber stamp to the front wrapper. Conrad Nagel and Renée Adoree star in this Silent film, today lost, originally directed by Josef von Sternberg. Midway into shooting Von Sternberg was fired by MGM and replaced… Read more

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1922. Draft script for the 1922 film. The film is now considered lost. Tess (Wanda Hawley) is a social climber who is neglected by her hardworking husband, David (Edward Hearn). She decides to go on a date with ex-suitor Arthur Sinclair (Casson Ferguson) to a casino, which is robbed while they are there. Her… Read more

N.p.: N.p., 1949. Archive of four letters between Carl Theodore Dreyer and film historian and eventual "Cahiers du Cinema" co-founder Joseph-Marie Lo Duca primarily regarding Lo Duca's proposed sound-added release of Dreyer's 1927 silent masterpiece "The Passion of Joan of Arc," and the French release of Dreyer's 1943 film "Day of Wrath." Included in the archive are… Read more

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1929. Draft script for the 1929 silent film. Holograph pencil annotations throughout by an unknown editor, with an unsigned typescript note of revisions to producer Hunt Stromberg bound in at the front of the script. Lon Chaney's penultimate film appearance, and his last silent film, as he would develop walking pneumonia during… Read more

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1926. Draft script for the 1927 Silent film. Based on the 1913 yellow peril play by Henry Maurice Vernon and Harold Owen, and previously adapted for the screen in 1919, directed by Maurice Elvey, and starring Matheson Lang. Lon Chaney, in full yellowface, murders his daughter after discovering she loves the son… Read more

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures / Famous Lasky Corporation, 1928. Final Draft script for the 1928 film, here under the working title "Quick Lunch." Included is a separately bound, 8-page sequence synopsis for the film. W.C. Fields' last silent film, but only the beginning of his fame. Wealthy Sam Hunter (Chester Conklin) is approached by scheming Richard Whitehead (Fields)… Read more

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1924. Continuity Draft script for the 1925 film. Studio File Copy, rubber-stamped on the front wrapper. Brief notation on one page in holograph pencil. Based on Tod Robbins' 1917 novel, a classic of horror fiction about a trio of circus freaks who escape captivity in the circus, open a curiosity shop, and… Read more

Berlin: Film-Kurier, 1929. Original program for the legendary 1929 silent film. Replete with beautiful gravure-printed production photographs, including a stunning deep focus shot on the rear panel from a party scene in the film, with Louise Brooks at the center of attention. Film-Kurier was the first German film journal, published daily beginning in 1919. Film-Kurier's classic era… Read more

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1927. Two vintage reference photographs for the 1927 film. Each with a printed snipe on the verso. Set during the Russian Revolution, Chaney plays a peasant who is promised food and a place to live if he safely escorts a Countess (Bedford) home. He does so, despite being captured and tortured by… Read more

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1927. Shooting script for the 1928 film. Original typescript with descriptive text in black type and intertitles in red type. Holograph ink and pencil annotations on the front wrapper, noting starring performers, draft type, and crediting screenwriter Meehan. With a few annotations in holograph pencil throughout. Based on the 1923 Broadway play… Read more

Budapest: Singer es Wolfner Irodalmi Intezet, 1927. First Hungarian Edition. Screenplay for the 1927 silent film, a photoplay edition with a photographic image of the film's star, Pola Negri, on the front wrapper. With the logo of the film's Hungarian distributor, Royal Apollo, on the front wrapper at the bottom right corner. Biro wrote the 1917 play,… Read more

Los Angeles: Fox Film Corporation, 1928. Original three-color herald for the 1928 silent film, with overprints in red ink on the verso added to promote the sound version, released shortly after the initial version, reading "The latest talking sensation!" and "Janet Gaynor / Talking for the first time on the screen." All of Murnau's American films are available… Read more

Paris: Editions de la Sirene, 1921. First Edition. First Edition. Includes three original illustrations: two are primarily typographic layouts, one centered around Charlie Chaplin (each is lacking the applied paste-up elements, in the case of the Chaplin image, it lacks the photographic image that was pasted on and that appears in the finished illustration), and the third and most… Read more

Hollywood: Universum Film [UFA] / Paramount Pictures, 1927. Original advertising herald for the US release of the 1927 film, a shortened 115 minute version re-cut by American playwright Channing Pollock, who is credited on the herald. Interestingly, the herald credits the film as joint production of Paramount and UFA, apparently just prior to the formation of the… Read more

Munich: Universum Film [UFA], 1927. Vintage black-and-white still photograph from the original German release of the 1927 film. With the UFA logo at the bottom right corner. Director Lang's expressionist masterpiece, based on the novel and written for the screen by then-wife von Harbou, one of the most enduring and influential films of the silent… Read more

London: Fritz Lang Film / UFA / W and F., 1928. Original UK program for the 1928 German film, released in the UK as "The Spy." Lang's followup to "Metropolis," and penultimate silent film, an underrated spy versus spy thriller containing some of the most virtuosic set pieces of the director's career, including a spectacular train crash… Read more

Hollywood: Famous Players-Lasky Corporation / Paramount Pictures, 1928. Original French pressbooks for three early silent comedies starring W.C. Fields, two of which ("Running Wild" and "Fools for Luck") are today lost, and one ("It's an Old Army Game") starring a young and vibrant Louise Brooks. Each printed in single-color wrappers, but with creative use of alternate-colored stock and/or ink,… Read more