Here Comes the Showboat 1940. Tent No. 1 12th Annual Variety Club Banquet. Wm. Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA. Sunday Night Oct. 20, 1940
- SIGNED Wraps. Stapled
- Pittsburgh , 1940
Pittsburgh, 1940. Wraps. Stapled. Near Fine. An unusual entertainment industry event program, with two layers of flaps under which there is a head that can be rotated on the pin holding it down and raised and for want of a better description, is a pop-up. It is both clever and odd as one undresses the man with the head who is the symbol of the Barkers -- he looks like a Monopoly tycoon. The event was an annual dinner, with entertainment, for club that appears to have been primarily comprised of film exhibitors -- theater owners, managers, and the like -- whose theaters not long before might have been Vaudeville houses and which even with the conversion to movie houses might still have live entertainment as a part of their program. The "Variety Club" was the name of the club, and its members were known as "Barkers", which would seem a bit of nostalgia for an era that had mostly passed. The entertainment for the evening did include big names -- Jimmie Durante, Ozzie Nelson, Red Skelton, and Howard Dietz, the successful lyricist ("Singin' in the Rain", "You and the Night and the Music", etc. etc.) and then MGM executive, served as the "Toastmaster", and on the dais sat Charles Laughton and Joe E. Brown, but this was an event Hollywood expressing appreciation and coddling the exhibitors; it was not a get-together of everyone involed in film participating on equal footing. 4to. 30.5 by 23 cm. 52 pp. The program is dominated by advertisements, a mix of Pittsburgh businesses and ones whose customer base including movie theaters. There are some short articles in the program that strike us as somewhat tangential. It is the striking cover that is of the greatest interest. The item is also manifestly scarce. We could locate no other copies. A roster of some of the membership is given, with small b/w of each, laid out in a Yearbook format. We note that the Patrons list of this "Club" does have the names of some movie stars -- Harry Richman, Conrad Nagel, Buddy Rogers -- but all ones no longer top flight stars. Light soiling and some edge wear, dog earring, all minor.