I recently acquired a copy of the the Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures for 1939. Their year books were thick, hard-bound bricks of books that detailed what everything, everyone, every studio, every contract player was doing. Very comprehensive! The 1939 book caught my eye as 1939 was commonly known as Hollywood’s Greatest Year because a huge number of highly regarded movies that have stood the test of time were released during that year. (See my blog for a list.)It’s also why I am writing a trilogy of novels set in 1939 called – fittingly enough – the Hollywood’s Greatest Year trilogy.

In leafing through the book, a 4-page spread caught my eye. It was for MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, which indicates how much they were promoting it. Not many other movies during Hollywood’s creative high-point got that treatment. So I thought I’d show what the spread looked like.

Being published 1939, it was, in fact, a compendium of movies that had come out in 1938, and in some cases, 1937. It jam-packed with details about motion pictures, performers, studios, directors, and so much more. In other words, it’s a book form of IMDB.com!

This one details what performers (aka “players”) recently appeared in. This page included Clark Gable and Judy Garland:

This page includes a table of how many features were produced by each studio over the previous 10 years:

Art directors and casting directors at each studio. (I’m not sure why Jack Otterson from Universal) got the bold- typeface-and-capitals treatment, but if anyone can tell me, I’d love to hear from you.)

And on this page, all the features released by each studio in the previous year (1938) are listed: