Daily Variety - 23rd Anniversary Issue (October 31, 1956)

Hollywood CA: Daily Variety, Ltd.. Very Good. 1956. (Vol. 93, No. 40, 2nd Section). Magazine. [moderate external wear and light soiling, slight tanning to areas of front cover, generally a good sound copy]. (photographs, ads, graphics) One of the elaborately-produced anniversary editions that were put out annually, back in the day, by the two major daily Hollywood-based trade publications ("the trades" in industry parlance), the other being The Hollywood Reporter. Nearly 400 pages in length (the last numbered page is 326, followed by about 50 pages of ads), it's chock-a-block with self-promotional ads placed by actors, directors, studios, and affiliated (truncated) show-businesses; one can only marvel (and maybe cringe a little) at the collective pressure applied to the advertisers by the publication's erstwhile sales force (assisted, no doubt, by the fact that it wouldn't do you any good in "this town" to be thought a piker by the editorial side of the business). Focusing on the hundreds of ads, though, shouldn't obscure the fact that there was always a lot of interesting editorial content in these brobdingnagian volumes, primarily in the form of single-page (or half-page) articles, anecdotes, business forecasts, nostalgic reveries, grumpy complaints, state-of-the-biz essays, just about anything anybody felt like spilling a couple of hundred words about. This particular issue contains 40 such contributions, some penned by genuine notables (Dore Schary, Nicholas Ray, Rod Serling,, Jerry Wald), but mostly by lesser-known industry people, Daily Variety reporters and columnists, etc. Unfortunately, though, there's no index-by-author -- only a table of contents in the back of the volume -- so the only way to discover some of these gems (not that they're all gems) is to flip through and stumble upon them -- or to be intrigued enough by a title ("Reminiscences of a Mugg"; "Will Honesty Pay?"; "The Magic Carpet and the Lunatic Fringe"to go straight to it. Numerous ads were taken out by the major studios, of course (and tend to be grouped together in color-coded sections), touting its executives, leading contract talent (mostly behind the camera), and current product. There's a "Year in Show Biz -- Day by Day" feature, a chronological rundown of notable industry events of the year; this being well into the 1950s, there are plenty of articles in this edition focusing on television, notably: "TV Pix Appear to Have Reached Crest," by Dave Kaufman; "East vs. West a State of Mind," by Rod Serling. Among the other notable articles: "Rebel--The Life Story of a Film," by Nicholas Ray (a reminiscence about James Dean and the making of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE); "The Mark of Hellinger," by Al Horwits, about the late producer Mark Hellinger; "'Pardon Me, I Didn't Catch the Name,'" a humorous piece by Stan Freberg. And more! ****NOTE that additional postage charges will be assessed for international shipping of his heavy oversize volume; if this concerns you, please contact us for a shipping quote before placing your order. As always at ReadInk, domestic Media Mail shipping is free.**** . (Inventory #: 29845)