Wisconsin: Walter Barnsdale, 1901. Vintage US one sheet lithographic poster for the 1901 documentary film short. One of the earliest silent documentary film shorts, created by early Wisconsin film pioneer Walter Barnsdale, who traveled around the state screening some of the first films ever made, including "Prison Bars," a film featuring the Wright Brothers, and a Western starring sharpshooter Buffalo.....

N.p. N.p., 1932. Vintage double-weight photograph of Wallace Beery, his wife at the time, Rita Beery, and their two-year-old daughter, Carol, 1933. Mimeo snipe, holograph annotations and agency stamp on the verso.The couple adopted Carol from Rita Beery's mother's half-sister not long after Wallace Beery's break-out role as Bill in the 1930 comedy, "Bill and Min."10 x 8 inches (25.5.....

Burbank, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1976. Vintage reference photograph from the 1976 film, showing Peter Bogdanovich directing actor Burt Reynolds, with actor Alan Gibbs looking on to the right.From the archive of film historian and author Joel Finler.Bogdanovich's ode to silent film. A lawyer turned film director falls hopelessly in love with his beautiful but klutzy leading lady, who is in.....

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1927. French pressbooks for two 1927 American silent films dealing with American sports: "Rough House Rosie" with Clara Bow (women's boxing) and "Casey at the Bat" (baseball). "Rough House Rosie" was made at the height of Clara Bow's reign as queen at Paramount, and is today a lost film. "Casey at the Bat" is based on the.....

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1927. Vintage hand color tinted lobby card for the 1927 silent film. Pictured are a curly haired Louise Brooks, looking past an oblivious Wallace Beery and toward a typically sly Adolphe Menjou. Based on the French play "L'homme en habit" ("The Man in Evening Clothes) by Andre Picard and Yves Mirand. Today considered a lost film. 11.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1926. Vintage reference photograph from the set of the 1926 film, showing actor John Gilbert applying makeup from a portable makeup case. With a printed snipe on the verso. Based on the 1894 German novel "The Undying Past" by Hermann Sundermann. The first of many pairings of legendary on-screen (and real life) couple Gilbert and.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1925. First Draft script for the 1925 film. A roguish Eastern European woman is hired to help con a young heiress out of her wealth by holding fake seances with the heiress' long-dead father. Director Tod Browning was best known for his controversial masterpiece "Freaks" (1932), a quintessential film from both the perspective of horror.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1925. Draft script for the 1926 silent film "The Blackbird," seen here under the working title "The Mocking Bird." Lon Chaney again serves as a versatile "man of a thousand faces," here playing the role of high-profile thief The Blackbird who lives a double-life as a beloved local bishop. He falls in love with a......

Chicago: Essanay Studios, 1914. Original advertising flyer for the 1914 silent short film, showing a sample newspaper herald, along with ordering information for theaters, on the recto, and a cast list and plot synopsis on the verso. The third and final adventure of Richard Neal, private investigator, who sets out to recover both stolen jewels and his kidnapped girlfriend from.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1927. Draft script for the 1927 silent film "Mockery," seen here under two early draft titles "Terror" and "The Harelip." Lon Chaney is a half-witted Russian peasant who is promised food and a place to live if he escorts a Countess (Bedford) safely home. He does so, despite becoming caught up in the Bolshevik revolution.....

New York: Various Publishers, circa 1916-1935. A collection of five children's books featuring the legendary silent movie star and humorist Charlie Chaplin as his inimitable Tramp character. The collection includes a picture book tie-in for his film "Easy Street," as well as a coloring book, an oversized comic book-style depiction of some of his stunts, and both an original copy.....

Various cities: Various Publishers, circa 1957 - 1967. A collection of 10 original lobby cards for the Mexican releases of nine films directed by or featuring Charlie Chaplin. Highlights of this bright, charming collection include lobby cards for the Mexican releases of Chaplin's "Limelight," "King of New York," and "The Circus," as well as two variants for "The Chaplin Revue,".....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1928. Draft script for the 1928 silent film. Lon Chaney is an undercover police detective who attempts to catch a thief notorious for slipping out of criminal charges by killing any witnesses set to testify against him, though Chaney can't help but simultaneously get wrapped up with an attractive flapper along the way. Chaney hand-picked.....

Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, 1923. Vintage photograph of Cecil B. Demille, Jeanie Macpherson and Jack Holt on the set of the 1923 film. With holograph annotations and rubber stamp of noted collector Gene Ringgold on the verso.Filmed in two parts, first is the story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt to the Promised Land, receiving the tablets and.....

Paris: Studio Soulat-Boussus, 1928. Vintage double weight photograph from the set of the 1928 film. Shot by Jean Soulat and Mauric Boussus of Studio Soulat-Boussus in Paris, with respective stamps on the verso. An excessively rare photograph from Dreyer's masterpiece, capturing Maria Falconetti in what one could accurately described as "in character." Franconetti became a stage actress in Paris in.....

Fort Lee, NJ: Fox Film, 1916. Vintage program for four special engagement showings of the 1916 film on November 27-28 and December 5-6, 1916 at Clunes Theatre in Los Angeles, with a striking four color exterior and interior composite of five black and white studio still images. The film, like all of director J. Gordon Edwards’ and nearly all of.....

Neuilly-sur-Seine, France: Gaumont, 1915. Vintage double weight matte finish still photograph from the legendary 1915 silent film serial. With the Gaumont logo at the lower right corner. Shown here is Musidora as Irma Vep conferring with another member of The Vampires, an anarchist criminal gang at the center of the story. The director's magnum opus, "Les vampires" is one of.....

Hollywood: Famous Players-Lasky Corporation / Paramount Pictures, 1926, 1927, 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.....

France: Le Film d'Art, 1915. Photograph from the 1915 French experimental short film, struck from the original negative circa 1936. With holograph annotations and agency stamps on the verso. Dr. Tube develops a powder that distorts reality after ingestion. He tests it out on himself, a dog, and a two couples. An early experimental film that uses distorted lenses and.....

Russia: Mezhrabpom-Rus, 1927. Vintage German program for the 1926 Russian silent film. Photo-illustrated throughout. The only cinema paper dating from the decade of release we have encountered for the film. Based on the 1906 novel by Maxim Gorky, about a woman's struggle to free her son from a Czarist prison camp during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The first film.....

New York: Exhibitor's Trade Review, 1920. First Edition. Magazine-style format featuring biographical essays by Hastings, profusely illustrated with reproduced images from Griffith's films and newspaper articles about the director. One of the best and earliest overviews of the legendary director. 9.5 x 12 inches, printed saddle-stapled wrappers. Good lacking the dust jacket, folded horizontally, several cello tape repairs, tears, foxing.....

Newark: Newark Theatre, Circa 1915. Original handbill for a theatrical run of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" (1915) at the Newark Theatre in Newark, New Jersey. Noted on the bill are cast members Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Donald Crisp, and Raoul Walsh (here spelled "Raul Walsh"), who played John Wilkes Booth. Also noted on the bill is that the.....

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, circa 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 rings are.....

Chicago: Essanay Studios, 1914. Original advertising flyer for the 1914 silent short film, showing a sample newspaper herald, along with ordering information for theaters, on the recto, and a cast list and plot synopsis on the verso. In colonial America, a young man seeks to free the woman he loves from an engagement to the lazy drunk her father has.....

US: Metro Pictures Corporation, 1921. Vintage photograph from the 1921 film. With a mimeo snipe on the verso. Based on the 1916 anti-war novel by Vincent Basco Ibanez, about a French and German family on both sides of World War I. Along with "The Sheik" later the same year, the film the catapulted Rudolph Valentino to stardom and helped create.....

London: Wardour Films / Universum Film [UFA], 1927. Original program for the London premiere of the film on March 21st, 1927 at the Marble Arch Pavilion, preceded in English by the US release earlier that month but with different title cards. Director Lang's expressionist masterpiece, based on the novel and written for the screen by then-wife von Harbou, one of.....

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 larger umbrella production.....

Berlin: Film-Kurier, 1924. Original German programs for duology "Die Nibelungen," one each for "Die Nibelungen: Siegfried" and "Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge." Based on the thirteenth century epic poem "Nibelungenlied." Text in German. Film-Kurier was the first German film journal, published daily beginning in 1919. Film-Kurier's classic era lasted until 1933, when its publisher, Alfred Weiner, had to flee Germany because.....

Berlin: August Scherl, 1928. First Edition, preceding all others, including the movie tie-in edition, published later the same year by Scherl. Rare in dust jacket. Basis for the German silent film classic by Fritz Lang, with a screenplay adapted by von Harbou from her novel. Released in the US as "Woman in the Moon." Like "Metropolis," a novel that was.....

N.p. N.p., Circa 1923. Vintage keybook reference photograph of Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford on the United Artists lot, circa 1923. Mimeo snipe on verso describes Lubitsch preparing to direct Pickford in an upcoming production of "Faust," with Fairbanks dressed as Mephistopheles (likely just donning a hat from his production of "Robin Hood" the year before). Lubitsch left.....

N.p. N.p., 1897. Vintage borderless photograph from the 1897 short film, with the number 542 in holograph pencil on the verso, with a still image from the film corresponding to that number on the website Catalogue Lumiere showing a similar scene. While the importance of the Lumiere Brothers to the invention and popularity of the moving image is well known.....

Chicago: Motion Picture Exhibitors League of America, 1912. Vintage program for the Second National Convention of the Motion Pictures Exhibitors League of America, held in Chicago from August 13-17, 1912. Photo-illustrated throughout with portraits of members, as well as numerous period advertisements, including ones for films, projectors, and other material for movie theaters. Rare, with no copies in OCLC.9 x......

N.p. N.p., Circa 1930. Vintage photograph of F.W. Murnau, cinematographer Floyd Crosby, a sound engineer, and extras on location during shooting of the 1931 film. Considered the first example of "docufiction." The fourth and final film made by Murnau during his time in the US. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty wrote the unpublished story "Turia," based on a South Sea.....

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 of a British.....

N.p. N.p., circa 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.....

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) about investing in.....

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 by Phil Rosen.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1924. Vintage publicity photograph for the 1924 film showing star John Gilbert relaxing with a book at his home. With a mimeo snipe on the verso. Based on the 1914 Russian play by Leonid Andreyev, first published in English in 1922. The first film put into production under the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the first.....

N.p. N.p., Circa 1925. Vintage reference photograph from the 1925 film, showing actors George K. Arthur, Bruce Guerin, Otto Matiesen, and Georgia Hale. From the archive of film historian and author Joel Finler.An impoverished group of dockside dwellers decide to move to the city to make their fortunes. Josef von Sternberg's directorial debut. 10 x 8 inches. Very Good plus.....

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1928. Archive of 94 vintage, double weight photographs from the 1928 film. Inspired by the 1919 nonfiction travel book by Frederick O'Brien, and retaining much of that work's anti-imperialist themes, about an alcoholic doctor who is set adrift by white traders after objecting to their treatment of the Polynesian workers, only to wash ashore on.....

N.p. N.p. Draft script for an unproduced film. A biopic about the silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who died of a heart attack in 1933 at age 46. Considered an important figure in the early development of film studios, he mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. In 1920 he was one of the highest paid.....

Paris: Franfilmdis, 1933. Collection of 3 vintage borderless double weight studio still photographs from the landmark 1933 silent film by Jean Vigo.Although he only made four films before his death from tuberculosis at the age 29, Jean Vigo would come to have an outsized influence on cinema, particularly the French New Wave, with Truffaut in particular paying homage to the.....

Weimer: Verlag der Hofbuchhandlung Alexander Buschke Nachf, 1908. First Edition. A very early work by writer, actress and film maker Thea von Harbou, best known for writing and co-directing "Metropolis" (1927) in collaboration with her then-husband Fritz Lang. The only recorded presentation copy, INSCRIBED by both Thea and her brother Horst (who would go on to be the still photographer.....

N.p. N.p., Circa 1928. Vintage portrait photograph of Erich von Stroheim from 1926, released as a publicity still for the 1928 film. Newspaper clipping of photograph with two "DEC 19 1934" stamps affixed to verso, and an "Erich von Stroheim" stamp, and "Erich von Stroheim, Goldwyn director" printed on verso.Stroheim's runaway production which was halted after nine months of shooting.....

N.p. N.p., Circa 1922. Vintage reference photograph of Erich von Stroheim from the set of the 1922 film. The legendary von Stroheim's third film as a director, at time the most expensive film ever made, and the first to cost over one million dollars, although the original budget was $250,000. The overruns led to the first of many clashes between.....

Berlin: Decla-Bioscop AG, 1921 [1920]. Vintage double weight matte finish reference photograph from the seminal 1920 silent film. Samuel Goldwyn discovered "Caligari" on a trip abroad, and released this film in the US in 1921, at which time 11 x 14 inch photos such as this one were printed on matte paper. Reference number "4" noted in holograph pencil at.....