{"id":17509,"date":"2015-01-09T15:09:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T20:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=17509"},"modified":"2015-01-09T16:46:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T21:46:29","slug":"1952-comic-book-ad-promised-to-land-you-a-movie-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2015\/01\/09\/1952-comic-book-ad-promised-to-land-you-a-movie-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"1946 comic book ad promised to land you a movie contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the promises made by ads in the backs of old comics were small, like claims a pair of X-Ray Specs would let us see the bones in our hands and through the clothes of our friends. Other promises were larger, such as the one I told you about made in 1932<\/a> that a clipped coupon could turn someone into a professional writer.<\/p>\n

But the inside back cover of Four Favorites<\/em> #22<\/a> (March 1946) promised the most life-changing reward of all—a movie contract!<\/p>\n

\"FourFavorite22MovieContractAd\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Send in a buck and you’d receive the book How to Get Into the Movies<\/em>, and if you had, why, you might now be as famous as Roger Batton.<\/p>\n

Who?<\/p>\n

Batton, who provided the testimonial above, claims to have gotten a part in the 1944 film Song of the Open Road<\/em> thanks to that book. One problem—the IMDb entry<\/a> for that film includes no one by that name. In fact, there’s no entry for Roger Batton on IMDb at all!<\/p>\n

As for Judith Allen, who wrote How to Get Into the Movies<\/em>, she did seem to have had a legit acting career, though IMDb<\/a> lists her with a total of 37 credits through 1952, rather than the 52 claimed through 1946 by the ad. <\/p>\n

Did her book ever get anyone into the movies other than Batton, who (without having seen the film) I suspect only appeared, if at all, uncredited as one of the “Hollywood Canteen Kids”? There’s no way of knowing, I guess, but if I cared enough, I could check out her advice myself, because there’s a copy of her book available at AbeBooks<\/a> for only $10.00.<\/p>\n

I suspect, however, that her advice, whether the price is one dollar or ten, is still overpriced, and unlikely to get me or anyone else a movie contract. If you’re desperate, though, feel free to give it a shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the promises made by ads in the backs of old comics were small, like claims a pair of X-Ray Specs would let us see the bones in our hands and through the clothes of our friends. Other promises were larger, such as the one I told you about made in 1932 that a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-17509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17509"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17623,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17509\/revisions\/17623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}