Moving Picture World Goes Digital; Zanuck Dubious

GoogleBooks now has full reproductions of some issues of Moving Picture World, all keyword-searchable.  You can access issues as PDFs or plain text.  This is a huge leap forward from the decades in which researchers could only hand-crank through microfilm editions, searching page by page for news about Nils Asther or Tom Mix or what have you.

Below: a helpful [edited] annotation from the Museum of the Moving Image's great website.

Moving Picture World [MPW] was a weekly trade magazine that published 89 volumes from March 9, 1907 through December 31, 1927. The publication was based in New York with offices at 361 Broadway. Moving Picture World frequently re-iterated its independence from any studio or industry corporation and claimed to be the “Official organ of the Moving Picture Exhibitors' Association.” Contents usually included: editorial, Facts and Comments, news from Chicago or Los Angeles, Music for Pictures, The Motion Picture Educator, Advertising for Exhibitors, Comments on Films, Reviews of Notable Releases, The Projection Department, Manufacturers Advanced Notes, Licensed and Independent Releases, Calendar of Independent Releases, Index of Film Stories, Correspondence, classifieds, and [lots of] advertisements.
       In 1911, MPW bought out Views and Film Index, and by 1914 its circulation was approximately 15,000. The magazine merged with Exhibitor's Herald on January 7, 1928 -- re-named Exhibitor's Herald and Moving Picture World (shortened later to Exhibitor's Herald World). After the merger the quality of the publication slowly declined; the valuable industry and business content decreased. A final merger occurred in 1931 when Exhibitor's Herald World and other major silent-era trade papers were taken over by Quigley publications and named Motion Picture Herald. [Martin J. Quigley had co-authored the MPPDA's Production Code in 1930.]  The Motion Picture Herald stopped circulation in 1973 as QP Herald.

Sources
• Richard Abel, Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2005).
• Anthony Slide, International Film, Radio, and Television Journals (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 262-65.
• ________, The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998).