Dracula (1931) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 3, 1931

Point Numero Uno: I must (or need, or have) to admit that I am something of an obsessive reorganizer. Time and time again I have redesigned how everything from my books, read and unread, to my soundtrack collection, to my movie collection, to my memorabilia collection are displayed on the shelves and walls around the house, or stored in the boxes in either my home office or the garage. This might be my externalizing some inner psychological issue or trauma in order to create a 'perfect representation' of my interests and hobbies that is both soothing (to me) and impressive (to others).

The categories on this blog, and its (sadly deleted) previous incarnation, have been created, deleted, recreated, deleted again, and then recreated yet again, in an attempt to create some form of soothing, sense-making linear pattern for all this nonsense and chaos. So it goes.

Point Numero Two-o: At some point in 1979 I began to clip and save ads for assorted horror, science-fiction, and fantasy movies from either the Oakland Tribune or the local TV Guide. I know this because I remember taping ads for both The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Fog (1980) to my bedroom wall.

None of those clippings have survived, though. But when I created a Pinterest account some ten or so years ago, I found a great many scans of newspaper ads and listings for movies and started pinning those to boards I created... then deleted, then recreated, then deleted again, and then recreated yet again. Do you sense a pattern here? I do.

Point Numero Three-o: When I resurrected and relaunched this blog I thought it would be nice to have a section dedicated to newspaper ads. I subscribed to newspapers.com and started clipping ads from either the San Francisco Examiner or the Oakland Tribune and here we are.

But, because my mind insists on overthinking the categorization and presentation of everything, my figuring out what would be blogged, when it would be blogged, and why it would be blogged became something of an issue and a challenge.

But I think I have figured a system out.

1931 seems to have been the year that the modern horror film as we have come to know it came into being. While there had been cinematic horror, science-fiction, and fantasy offerings prior to the release of Dracula, most eschewed a commitment to a supernatural threat. There would alway be a rational explanation for the supposed supernatural horrors the characters seemed to suffer.

Not so with Dracula, though. The Count was an actual, supernatural, and evil threat. He was not some mortal playacting at being a vampire, he was a vampire. Cool.

So 1931 is the starting point for my searching out all the horror, science fiction, and fantasy movie ads I can find. Well, it is the starting point in terms of the year. Figuring out a workable hunt and gather approach to finding and clipping all these movie, television, and book ads and listings took some time. Because there are some 34,310 days between January 1, 1931, give or take, and January 1, 2025, give or take. That is a whole lot days to thumb through old newspaper archives, searching out innumerable ads for horror, science-fiction, and fantasy movies, television shows and specials, and even books and, maybe, a few magazines.

Which how and why I came to focus my searches on a single calendar day. Today's search entailed going through the archives of the San Francisco Examiner for the day of April 3rd. I start at 1931, then go to 1932, 1933, 1934, and so on and so forth. 

This approach streamlines and focuses my hunting and gathering of ads into a manageable pattern that might allow me to sort through some 94 or so years of both the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune in just two or three years. Maybe.

Now comes the challenge of coming up with something interesting to say about most of the ads that I am posting...