Original Metropolis film programme for the British premiere of Fritz Lang’s film in 1927.
The world’s most valuable movie poster, for Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, is to be auctioned again after making a record $690,000 in 2005. Ephemera related to the film is notoriously scarce, with only four copies of the poster known to survive.
Almost as uncommon is this amazing Metropolis film programme produced for the London premiere at the Marble Arch Pavilion on March 21, 1927, one of only three copies that we have handled.
Not only a list of cast and crew, it includes eleven short pieces on the making of the movie, commentary from the director and cast, and numerous production photographs and film stills, many attractively arranged as modernist collages.
One of the most interesting sections shows in parallel columns how a passage of film scenes was adapted from the novel of the same name by Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou.
Below the fold you’ll find the complete booklet – just click any image for the high-res version:
First edition of The Psychology of Everyday Living by Ernest Dichter (1947).
Mid twentieth-century America. In a corporate board room, hazy with tobacco smoke and whiskey fumes, a man pitches innovative new advertising ideas.
Soap isn’t just for mundane hygiene issues, it’s associated with sensuality and should be marketed as sexy and refreshing.
Cigarettes aren’t just commodities, they’re rewards for a job well done, or a break from a stressful work day.
Car makers should promote their brands with convertibles because men associate them with freedom and the fantasy of having a mistress, even if they end up buying a sedan when they take their wife back to the dealership.
Mad Men’s Don Draper.
Don Draper, right? Now in its fifth season, Mad Men has reintroduced the American public to the advertising revolution that led companies away from spots extolling their product’s obvious uses to a new style targeting consumers’ unspoken desires. But the instigator of this movement was not a mysterious and dangerously sexy ad executive like Don Draper. He was a much more interesting figure who forever changed American consumerism.
Ernest Dichter (1907–91).
Ernest Dichter was born in Vienna in 1907 and following a severely impoverished childhood was employed in his uncle’s department store. Working as a window dresser, he became interested in marketing and introduced new American ideas into the shop, such as the use of music to soothe customers.
In 1938, following university training in psychology and informal training in psychoanalysis, he moved to New York with his wife and only $100 to his name. Dichter worked for a time with a traditional market-research firm, but in 1939 he sent a letter to six corporations in which he offered his understanding of psychoanalysis as a way to radically improve their marketing strategies. Four responded, and his first contract was for Ivory Soap. Using in-depth consumer interviews, he learned that when shoppers picked a particular brand,
“it wasn’t exactly the smell or price or look or feel of the soap, but all that and something else besides—that is, the gestalt or ‘personality’ of the soap.
This was a big idea. Dichter understood that every product has an image, even a ‘soul’, and is bought not merely for the purpose it serves but for the values it seems to embody. Our possessions are extensions of our own personalities, which serve as a ‘kind of mirror which reflects our own image’. Dichter’s message to advertisers was: figure out the personality of a product, and you will understand how to market it” (The Economist).
Dichter’s belief in good marketing went beyond creating successful ads; it became a total philosophy. Profoundly affected by the turmoil he had experienced as a young man in Europe, he believed that consumerism was the only bulwark against totalitarianism. The public, he argued, must learn to stop feeling guilty. They must accept and fulfill their unconscious desires, or risk falling under the spell of communism or fascism.
In light of this, he wrote his first book for the general public. The Psychology of Everyday Living (BOOK SOLD), published in 1947, was
“designed as an accessible self-help manual to help Americans ‘accept the morality of the good life’… As America entered the 1950s, the decade of heightened commodity fetishism, Dichter offered consumers moral permission to embrace sex and consumption, and forged a philosophy of corporate hedonism, which he thought would make people immune to dangerous totalitarian ideas” (Cabinet Magazine, issue 44, p. 30).
Chapters such as “The Magic of Soap”, “What Bread Means to You”, “How to Be Happy While Cooking”, and “The Psychology of Buying” purported to solve the problems of everyday life, but largely encouraged a positive attitude to consumption by stressing the good feelings associated with a new purchase or the use of a specific commodity.
The book is extensively illustrated, with images that promote consumerism even more blatantly than the text does. A photograph of a woman applying makeup is captioned “Cosmetics provide psychological therapy”, and another of a man trying on a hat reads, “The right kind of hat gives us dignity”.
In chapter after chapter, Dichter posits that consumer products can help us express our individuality, engage with the world in new ways, or simply provide a self-esteem boost:
The chapter on cigarettes argues that those who try to abstain from smoking are wrong to feel guilty about the habit. Dichter writes that,
“Efforts to reduce the amount of smoking signify a willingness to sacrifice pleasure in order to assuage their feeling of guilt… Guilt feelings may cause harmful physical effects not at all caused by the cigarettes used, which may be extremely mild. Such guilt feelings alone may be the real cause of the injurious consequences”.
One of the photographs used in this chapter has a decidedly sexual subtext:
Automobiles, according to Dichter, aren’t simply for running errands or getting to work. They’re about freedom, personal identity, youthful self-assertion, and, of course, sex.
Probably the best illustration is “What is bought depends on what the woman says”:
Though Dichter faced scrutiny from those who were wary of the corporate hold on Americans’ psyches, criticism only seemed to generate more converts. But his method did have faults, and executives in the early 60s began to feel that his ideas were sometimes too strange to be practical. Like Don Draper dismissing the psychoanalyst in the first episode of Mad Men, the director of a Pepsi campaign fired Dichter when he was told that ice shouldn’t be used in advertisements because it reminded consumers of death. At the the same time, the advent of accessible computing meant that firms were able to return to more scientific methods of researching consumer behaviour. But Dichter remains the most important figure of twentieth-century advertising. Glance at the television or pass a billboard and you’ll recognise that the concepts he pioneered still dominate the advertising that surrounds us.
Duke University’s John W. Hartmann Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History has digitised a huge range of twentieth-century advertising, including both print ads and television commercials. In many cases you can see the difference between pre and post-Dichter advertising strategies.
Last week we posted about some Railway Series pre-cut models from the 1950s that we wanted to know more about, and reader Justin A. Olsen kindly replied:
I saw your page on the Railway Series Press-Out Models, and wanted to throw in my own comments.
These models were first published around 1957 by the same group who published the main books at the time (Edmund and Ward). Card modelling was quite popular at the time however most of these models (Micromodels, Modelcraft, etc.) were at smaller scales and tended to be complex. It seems the Railway Series engines were made to be built up by those with less experience, but the models’ artwork does look nice (I’ve considered building “Gordon” from the scans you showed).
Other engines that were available were Thomas (with coach Annie) and James. The ads always suggested other models were in preparation, but nothing else ever appeared. I would presume they stopped publishing these around the 1960’s or 1970’s once Awdry stopped making new books.
These models are very scarce, I’ve only seen one other example (Thomas) ever appear. Thanks for the scans you posted, I always wanted a go at building one of these models.
Thanks Justin! We’re still interested in purchasing the two models we don’t have yet, Thomas and James, so if you have some you’d like to sell then do contact us by email or phone.
The Railway Series Pre-Cut Model Engine Book No. 2 – Percy with Clarabel the Coach.
Update (14 May, 2012): Reader Justin A. Olsen has kindly replied to our request for additional information on these models; you can read his comments here. We’re still interested in purchasing the two models we don’t have, Thomas and James, so please contact us if you have any you’re willing to part with.
Can you help? We recently acquired two lovely items from W. Awdry’s The Railway Series. These “Pre-Cut Model Engine Books” each contain a story and the parts and instructions for making two toys out of card. We have Number 2: Percy with Clarabel the Coach and Number 3: Gordon the Big Engine & His Tender (click to enlarge the images):
Percy Pre-Cut Model.
Percy Pre-Cut Model Instructions.
I believe these were produced in the late 1950s, as The Eight Famous Engines, the final story book listed on the back of each volume, was published in 1957. Four different titles in the pre-cut model series are described as being available (with more in production), and we would love to know more about these and possibly locate copies of the other two, Thomas the Tank Engine and James the Red Engine.
Please do get in touch if you know more about these sets and their sales records, and especially if you have copies to sell. You can leave a comment on this post or contact us by email or phone.
Below, a few more photos of the model books. If you have a good printer you could even construct them yourself!
Clarabel Pre-Cut Model.
Percy & Clarabel Story.
The Railway Series Pre-Cut Model Engine Book No.3 – Gordon the Big Engine & His Tender.
Over the weekend a group of librarians, academics, and book dealers had a great twitter conversation about rare book dealer descriptions and their use in library cataloguing.
It started with Mike Widener’s post at the Yale Law Library Blog about his love of dealer catalogues and his practice of including their content in library catalogue entries. Mike listed the rules he follows and wrote that “The description adds value to our catalog. It records a wealth of information about the book that would be impossible to include in the online catalog record”.
This caught the attention of Jeremy Dibbell, who included it in his weekly Links & Reviews post, as well as John Overholt, and Sarah Werner, who began a twitter conversation hoping to get more input from other librarians and book dealers. I noticed the conversation about half-way through, and was about to chime in when Sarah kindly asked me and fellow dealer Brooke Palmieri for our input.
My reaction was very positive. My colleagues and I put a huge amount of work into our cataloguing, including original research and very careful consideration of how we present books, manuscripts, and other objects. They aren’t just things to be sold, they carry historical and cultural meanings of which we’re the temporary caretakers. Our goal is to do these justice, and it’s nice to know that our institutional colleagues appreciate it when we do a good job, and that they find our work useful in the larger context of academic librarianship.
Additionally, as dealers we often use library catalogues to do research, and anything that could enhance the experience appeals to us. Dealer descriptions often include provenance and bibliographical information that might be difficult to include otherwise, and they can provide excellent search terms for those browsing a catalogue. I also love the idea of searching library databases and being able to see what other dealers have said about a book over the course of time. In the absence of a comprehensive database of dealer catalogues (which will probably not happen in the near future!) this is the best idea I’ve heard for making available this type of information.
One of the main points at issue during the discussion was that of credit. We all agreed that it’s essential to credit the dealer in the same way that you would cite a source in an academic article. Mike Widener also directly asks the dealer for permission before posting, and while this is definitely the polite (and legal!) way to proceed, my colleagues and I agree that it’s less important than giving credit (as long as there is no unique content in the cited catalogue entry, which it was pointed out, would require more careful consultation with the dealer).
Much of the discussion also hinged around the capability of various library systems to accommodate this type of information, and the procedures for cataloguing at different institutions. I hope that despite the differences between systems and philosophies, more institutions will follow Widener’s lead and find ways to incorporate dealer descriptions in their online catalogues. As well as being practical, it’s a wonderful way to foster closer ties between institutions and dealers. If any readers are librarians or rare book dealers with an opinion to contribute, please do chime in, either her, or at the blogs of the various contributors.
Recent Comments