By Zachary Zahos
The Media History Digital Library has recently returned from a trip to that most fabled and misunderstood decade, the 1960s, with a treasure trove of freshly digitized film pressbooks in tow. Newly scanned from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research’s Wilkinson pressbook collection, these hundreds of pressbooks offer valuable insights into how both mainstream and independent films were marketed before the rise of New Hollywood cinema.
Between December 2023 and fall 2024, the MHDL has digitized over 350 pressbooks from the Wilkinson pressbook collection. The vast majority of these, approximately 275, date to the early-to-mid-1960s. These additions more than quadruple the MHDL’s collection of pressbooks from that decade. They also greatly expand the breadth of film distributors represented in our pressbook holdings, from 13 to 23. In addition, about 75 pressbooks from the Wilkinson collection hail from the mid-to-late 1950s, adding to the MHDL’s robust collection of classical Hollywood promotional materials.
The original pressbooks were donated by Clark Wilkinson between 1971 and 1979, forming the WCFTR’s Wilkinson pressbook collection. In addition to his day job as an insurance agent, Wilkinson (1906-1996) was a famed collector of film memorabilia. Among the photos, costumes, and props Wilkinson owned at some point of his life were Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula cape from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and the original stop-motion model of the titular ape from Mighty Joe Young (1949). He displayed his wide-ranging collection in the Clark Wilkinson Movie Museum, housed in the basement of his home in Baraboo, Wisconsin. After the Circus World Museum, the Clark Wilkinson Movie Museum became one of Baraboo’s cultural fixtures during the latter half of the 20th century.
While these pressbooks have been available to researchers visiting the WCFTR, they have been difficult to access by the wider public, until now. Thanks to a generous grant from Matthew and Natalie Bernstein, the WCFTR funded the hundreds of hours of labor necessary to scan, process, and upload these materials to the Internet Archive. These pressbooks are now all freely available at the Media History Digital Library and are searchable in Lantern.
To the MHDL, this digitization effort from the Wilkinson pressbook collection adds:
- Over 50 pressbooks each from Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.
- Over 25 pressbooks from Buena Vista Distribution.
- Around 25 pressbooks each to our existing pressbook collections from Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures, and United Artists.
- Around 15 pressbooks from Allied Artists International.
- Less than 10 each from independent distributors American International Pictures, Childhood Pictures, New World Pictures, Continental Distributing, and Lopert Films.
We hope researchers will find these digitized pressbooks as fascinating and illuminating as we do. Notably, this collection mostly predates New Hollywood touchstones like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Graduate (1967). With its focus on late-1950s through mid-1960s titles, the Wilkinson pressbook collection shines a light on the diverse output of both Hollywood and independent distributors before the New Hollywood movement. The countercultural image of the 1960s is proudly displayed in 20th Century Fox’s pressbook for Modesty Blaise (1966) or across the collection’s sampling of “beach party” films like Muscle Beach Party (1964), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), all distributed by independent outfit American International Pictures. Yet, when taken as a whole, the Wilkinson pressbook collection defies easy categorization, illustrating the range of genres and styles marketed to audiences throughout this decade.
You can find pressbooks for seminal studio films of this era, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), viewable here in a lavish 42-page edition. You can also find equally elaborate pressbooks for films that go somewhat overlooked today, such as Genghis Khan (1965), Shenandoah (1965), and PT 109 (1963), the latter starring Cliff Robertson as World War II-era John F. Kennedy. Some other bold graphic design choices that caught our eye include the gold cover of Harlow (1965) and Warner Bros’ pressbook for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), fronted by a gothic cartoon by Charles Addams, of The Addams Family fame. You can also find pressbooks for remakes, such as Stagecoach (1966), and re-releases like The Ten Commandments (1956), revived for general release in 1960 and once again in 1966.
The collection’s Buena Vista Distribution pressbooks capture many of these trends. The 1960s saw profitable re-releases of animated classics from Disney’s Golden Age, bringing new opportunities for merchandise, promotional partnerships, and even coloring contests. The pressbooks showcase such efforts for Bambi (1942), Cinderella (1950), and several other canonical titles. They also demonstrate similar exploitation for new live-action Disney titles at the time such as Miracle of the White Stallions (1964), The Gnome-Mobile (1967), and The Fighting Prince of Donegal (1966). Fittingly, the longest pressbook of the Buena Vista Distribution lot is for The Jungle Book (1967), which needs no introduction.
We encourage you to peruse this collection, and the MHDL’s larger pressbook holdings, for yourself. To view all digitized pressbooks, you may browse the MHDL’s page on the Internet Archive. If you would like to sort the MHDL’s pressbook by distributor, we recommend scrolling down on the MHDL’s Pressbook page to the “Items in Collection” table and viewing the sheet labeled “Creator.” To perform more targeted searches, we recommend using Lantern.