[Movie Press Book]: Norman Film Manufacturing . Co. Presents The Love Bug: A 2 Reel Comedy Scream with an All Colored Cast.[and more] Books Into Film,Ephemera

Single folio folded to make four pages. 9.5" x 12". Extensively illustrated. About fine. Printed in brown on off-white semi-glossy paper. A pressbook distributed to movie theatres operators encouraging them to book the all-Colored films of the pioneering Norman Film Manufacturing Company. The Norman Film Mfg. Co. was one of the first black-owned film companies founded by Oscar Micheaux. Aside from *The Love Bug*, the other films promoted in this pressbook were: *The Crimson Skull, Green-Eyed Monster* and *The Bull-Dogger* featuring "World Colored [Rodeo] Champion" Bill Picket. Little is known of *The Bull-Dogger*, a western suspense movie and now a lost film, beyond what has been gleaned from surviving posters: it featured Anita Bush (here in her first film role, later known as "The Little Mother of Colored Drama"), Lawrence Chenault, Steve Reynolds ("the One-legged Marvel"), and the famed wild west performer Bill Pickett, along with 30 other black cowboys. It was filmed in the "All-Colored City of Boley, Oklahoma," it appears to be the second film produced by Norman, and might well be the first western by an all-black studio. The pressbook shows additional advertising for the other films. An uncommon survivor of the pioneer days of black film, and in exceptional condition.