LAMP Member News
Welcome all LAMP Members to the Second Edition of ...LAMP Member News
We received several great emails after our first Edition with numerous comments, such as:
"Great idea! I hope you will surely make this message a fixture."P.W.
AND several GREAT suggestions... We really appreciate all of you who take your time to email us with suggestions, praise (we love those) ... and yes, even criticism (we don't like those as much.. but that's ok). Most of the suggestions that we received were GREAT suggestions and we're implementing a couple of them immediately.
Covered in this Edition:
WHAT'S NEW - New article and chart on ...Scopes that were the craze in the 1950s and 1960s
WHAT'S CHANGED - NSS number combination now over 2 decades online
New Still Numbers
Update on the LAMP Australian site
SPOTLIGHT - Tool of the month - word search throughout LAMP
ASK ED - The question of the month
ODDITIES - Our monthly oddity
FINAL NOTE - Coming of Summer
BUT before we begin.. We have a wide variety of members so if you're NOT interested in Member News and tips on how to utilize LAMP more, you can opt out of receiving this Member News. Just email me and say 'OPT OUT of Member News' or something to that affect.
OK.. so let's try to cover several new areas this month.
We have been working on a new section that really needs a lot more work, but it's going to be a while before I can get back to expand it on out. So, instead of just holding it for later, I wanted to put it online for all of our Members so you can be using the major portions of it.
In the 1950s, the film industry went through a craze to move to WIDE SCREENS. We call it Scope-Mania. This only lasted for about 15 years and then technology basically found a better way (meaning cheaper) to handle it. BUT we have used this several times in helping to date originals vs. reissues and thought that it might be a good new TOOL for you.
We have an article for you to explain basically what went on (written FOR poster collectors.... or in other words.... IN ENGLISH instead of all that techie stuff). We also list the 39 different 'Scopes' that we have found from around the world so far. As I said, there is a tremendous amount of additional research and compilation needs to be done to expand it out and move it to the Video & Film Section of LAMP, but take a look. The article is called Scopes.
To get to it, from our home page, go to the Members Main Area and look in the General Section in 'International'.
I also put up a quick chart to time frame the major ones in the Members Area: General Section under 'Logs'. It's called Scope Chart.
We hope this new tool will add more ammunition to your arsenal.
NSS Number Expansion - As you know, we are in the process of combining our 15,000 NSS numbers that we had already compiled with a NSS query book that we acquired from Bruce Hershenson. We are seeing a GREAT amount of new information here for you... AND we're also seeing NUMEROUS areas that really need expanding. Anyway, you can now see over 2 DECADES of combined NSS numbers are already online and available to Members ONLY. These print records also show when NSS just printed for small distributors and DIDN'T actually distribute them. (posters WITHOUT NSS numbers on them). After we finish this pass through all the numbers, we have 2 additional passes before we get ready to print the new NSS book this fall. Here is the NSS Numbers - as I finish each, I place an (*) by the year so you can tell.
Stills New Additions - Well...... we were 'SUPPOSE' to have a new batch of still numbers online for you by now..... We've been working on them, but as on this newsletter, they're not quite ready to go online... SO... WATCH the New Additions and we'll try to get them online for you this week. (sorry!!) To get to the section, from our Home Page, click on the Member Area to go to the Member Central Area. Look at the top section 'General Area' ( you can see a photo of it just below) and on the right you will see 'Production Stills Section'. Click on it and go down to the bottom of the page and you will see 'New Additions'.
Updated Australian site - the LAMP Australian website (AustralianMoviePosters.com) has been updated with a new home page and several new additions. The Australian Member Area has also been expanded with lists of Distributors and Production Companies.
Last Edition, we highlighted the tool in the Advanced Search called 'Markings'. We received SEVERAL positive emails on this. Most members didn't even know that it existed.... WELL, this month we want to highlight another tool that should really help you find your way around better.
As we continue to expand, our structure has to ALWAYS change (unfortunately). And since we don't have the manpower (in our case A manpower and A womanpower) to make massive changes and the massive amounts of links, we just have to do the best we can. Because of this, we have gotten NUMEROUS dealers and collectors complaining that they 'CAN'T FIND' the article or the piece of information that they're looking for. About 4 YEARS ago, I created a special tool to help try to remedy this problem and help everyone find whatever it is they're looking for that isn't where they thought it was.
It is a 'modified' full site keyword search.
Notice the clip on the right. I placed the key word searches in the 2 Alphabetical Indexes (I clicked on each before I captured them so it would stand out in the clip). So you can click on either one.
Once you go into the Alphabetical Index... look for this:
I used Edison as an example, to show that you might remember a main word without remembering what the article was actually about. If you sort on Edison, you will find Edison listed 124 times on LAMP. When you are not sure where or WHAT the article is... if you can remember a key word in the article, this should help you isolate the article you're looking for.
Go give it a try!! It SHOULD eliminate most of the 'can't find' problems.
Happy Hunting!!
A couple of weeks ago, there was a topic on the forums that got me to thinking and I wanted to ask all Members (both Dealers and Collectors) your opinion. The topic was 'pieces' of posters. A lot of dealers and collectors brought up that they had various pieces and didn't know what to do with them.... I think we even have a couple of dozen pieces around here somewhere...
We have a high traffic volume going through LAMP ( a couple of hundred thousand a month). If YOU would send me the information on what you have.... i.e. year; title; what piece; I will be glad to make a page that lists all the pieces and put it in a high traffic area. I WILL NOT put your name on it. But if I am contacted on ANY piece that might be a match, I would then email YOU the contact information of the person that has it.
My Question? - Would YOU like me to put up a page to try to match pieces?Before I go and do the work, I would like to know that it will be used. So if this is something of interest, please email me....
As a reference site, we are CONSTANTLY getting questions by email. The majority of the questions are 'what is this?'; what is this worth?; 'do you have an image on this?';'what country is this from?'; etc. etc. Sometimes we get oddities that take some digging to try to figure out what they are... That is what is so much fun. There is ALWAYS oddities and exceptions and you always run into weird posters that you never knew existed.
BUT, I wanted to focus on a question each month that I thought would be of interest to a wide range of Members.
This past month I was helping a collector that was asking about an Italian poster. They had found our charts on French and Belgian pieces and was looking for the charts on the Italian posters. The question was, "Why didn't I have charts on the other major countries?".
This got me to thinking that a lot of collectors AND DEALERS probably don't understand the situation. The charts that we have are NO WHERE else in the world but here... because I created them. And YES, we HOPE to have charts on EVERY COUNTRY.
Here is the problem: to create the charts like we have for our French posters, I have to have preferably 1000 or more high res images of posters from a variety of decades. NOW, by high res, I mean that I have to be able to read the printers tag and any tiny print on the poster. Until I have that type of representation, I can begin, but I can't put together any firm information. It has only been the last couple of years that we have been able to get that good of images. SLOWLY, we are gathering more and more images to create better reference information. This is mainly because of Heritage Auction and Bruce Hershenson. THANKFULLY, we are beginning to also get a few dealers that are putting GREAT images online that we can use, such as Cinemasterpieces and Femmes Fatales and Fantasies
HOPEFULLY, in the next few months we will have a couple of additional country charts that will help. We have committed to keep pushing to document, compile and untangle as many problems as we can.
Here's a real oddity for you....
In 1937, Victory Pictures released a 15 chapter serial called 'Blake of Scotland Yard' which was fairly popular. This film was distributed by Victory and by Ace Pictures, which was a small distributor that distributed a few films in 1936 and 1937. ....
Besides the poster that was issued in 1937, another poster has shown up that has all of the same information EXCEPT.... a few ODD details on it. 1. the Victory logo is different, and the litho plate numbers indicate that the second poster was issued about 9 years later...
now here's the oddity.. 9 years later would be AFTER Victory had closed and was no longer in existence.
Take a look: Here's the logos ... notice that on the first logo from the poster issued in 1937...
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Victory name can be seen going down both sides of the angel where on the second, no attempt was made at placing letters, just dots were made.
The Morgan plate numbers on the original release was 11427 which would be consistant with 1937 but on the second release was 29891.... almost 18000 plates later which would be consistant with 1946.
WHY would a poster be rereleased 9 YEARS AFTER the company was closed but the same logo used?
Here is our 'assumption'... Blake of Scotland Yard was also distributed by Ace Pictures Corp. which was a small distributor that only distributed a few films in 1936 and 1937 .. BUT they made ONE attempt (that we have found) at a production in 1947 with a film called Heading For Heaven.
Our assumption would be that they rereleased the films that they had distribution rights to (which included Blake of Scotland Yard) in 1946 to raise money for their production. OK... anybody else got any clues???
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FINAL NOTE:
The coming of summer - so BEWARE!!
This is one of the many odd notes and topics that we receive so I thought that each month I'll try to end on something we received..
"So I'm using my BBQ this weekend... so I thought I'd clean it up..
I have known there were bee's coming from under the cover so I thought I'd kill them, obviously...
So here's the BBQ in question..."
"I thought I was pretty smart.. hehehe.. designed to be easily maneuvered under the cover of darkness...
So then I release the weapon of buzz destruction.."
"the sound from under the cover was incredible!!! You could hear it 3miles away easy...
Then I ran like the clappers....
coming back a few minutes later to see the death toll..."
"I continued to remove the cover and to light the bbq to give it a clean when I noticed some fatty looking substance on the top of the side shelf ....
Bit weird.. I clean it before I put it away for winter and no way was there fat there so I begun to wonder......
NO..... it can't be could it?
I slowly removed the rest of the cover only to find the HQ.. "
Summer's Coming - BE CAREFUL!!
That's it for the Second Edition... If you have any 
comments or suggestions. please let me know. We want this to be a help to our Members and not just useless dribble. The only way I will know if I am providing help info or 'dribbling' is for you to let me know.
If I can help with any research, let me know
ed
