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Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the movie “Pastor Hall” (1940)

Object | Accession Number: 2018.590.36

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    Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the movie “Pastor Hall” (1940)
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    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the British feature film “Pastor Hall,” released in the United States on September 13, 1940. This reproduction was created for the 2007 “Cinema Judaica” exhibition at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York City. It provides a transcription of the introduction that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt recorded for the movie’s American release. “Pastor Hall” was an adaptation of the 1938 play written by Ernst Toller, a Prussian Jewish veteran of World War I. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Toller was declared an enemy of the state and immigrated to England, and moved again to the United States in 1936. In the film, a Lutheran minister resists the Nazification of German Protestant churches, and is imprisoned in a concentration camp as a result. He manages to escape, but is eventually killed. It equates Hitler with the Antichrist, bent on destroying not only the Jewish people, but Christianity as well. The protagonist is based on Rev. Martin Niemöller, who was arrested in 1936 and sent to Dachau concentration camp. ”Pastor Hall” was brought to the United States by James Roosevelt, son of First Lady Eleanor and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The producers had to cut 5 minutes of the most brutal scenes before it was given approval by the American censors. The First Lady recorded a prologue to the film, informing the American viewers that it was representative of actual events. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.
    Date
    Cinematic Release:  1940 May
    Geography
    creation: Great Britain
    distribution: Great Britain
    distribution: United States
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur
    Markings
    front, top header, printed, black ink : EXPLOIT THE UNIQUE PROLOGUE / Spoken on the Screen by Eleanor Roosevelt / Written by Robert E. Sherwood
    front, photo caption, printed, black ink : Eleanor Roosevelt, whose / syndicated newspaper col- /umns and radio talks num- / ber many millions of / followers throughout / America, is seen and heard / on the screen in a special / prologue to “Pastor Hall.”
    Contributor
    Compiler: Ken Sutak
    Production Company: Charter Film Productions
    Distributor: United Artists Corporation
    Distributor: Grand National Pictures
    Biography
    The Cinema Judaica Collection consists of more than 1,200 objects relating to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical subjects, from 1923 to 2000, from the United States, Europe, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. The collection was amassed by film memorabilia collector Ken Sutak, to document Holocaust-and Jewish-themed movies of the World War II era and the postwar years. The collection includes posters, lobby and photo cards, scene stills, pressbooks, trade ads, programs, magazines, books, VHS tapes, DVDS, and 78 rpm records.

    Sutak organized these materials into two groups, “Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949” and “Cinema Judaica: The Epic Cycle, 1950–1972” and, in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum (now the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York), organized exhibitions on these two themes in 2007 and 2008. Sutak subsequently authored companion books with the same titles.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Object Type
    Pressbooks (lcsh)
    Physical Description
    Reproduction of a page from the pressbook for the film “Pastor Hall,” enlarged and printed horizontally on a sheet of legal-size paper with a shiny surface. The image of the page has thin, black, printed, sawtooth border and is surrounded by a large margin on all sides. Within the border, in the upper right corner, is a black-and-white headshot of Eleanor Roosevelt, in three-quarter left profile, with a caption beneath. Three lines of large, black text form the header, and several paragraphs of smaller text make up the body of the page. The image of Mrs. Roosevelt is oddly printed with irregular dark areas altering it.
    Dimensions
    Overall: Height: 11.000 inches (27.94 cm) | Width: 17.000 inches (43.18 cm)
    Materials
    overall : paper, ink

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    No restrictions on access
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. Copyright status is unknown.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Geographic Name
    Great Britain. United States.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The pressbook reproduction was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
    Record last modified:
    2024-02-27 15:12:07
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn693026

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