As with other Hollywood and non-Hollywood stars, Louise Brooks’ image could be found on a number of commercial products. In the 1920s and 1930s, these products included printed items such as postcards, trading cards, and what are colloquially known as cigarette cards. The most familiar, of course, are postcards. They require a postage stamp to be sent through the mail, typically had an image on the front and space for a message on the back, and measure approximately 4 x 6 inches (or 10.2 x 15.2 cm). Trading or product cards were, as a rule, smaller in size, and were usually inserted into the packaging of a variety of items such as bread, cookies, candy (chocolate and gum), sugar, flour, and tobacco. The cards known as cigarette cards are considered a subset of trading cards, but differ in that they were inserted into just one type of product, namely packs of cigarettes. Essentially, trading cards were novelty items inserted into product packaging as an inducement to purchase… as in buy our product and “collect them all”. Though such cards were considered disposable and sometimes poorly printed, others were finely printed, attractive, and collected by film buffs or fans of the actor or actress they depicted. Some card publishers, whose series ran into the dozens or hundreds, even issued albums as a further inducement to collectors. Along with cards, albums also survive.
This page on the Louise Brooks Society website gathers a selection of vintage cards from the United States. What sets this group of cards apart are the number of arcade cards shown here. These cards are called arcade cards for the reason they were purchased not in stationary stores or five-and-dimes, but from vending machines found in arcades, boardwalks, or amusements parks. These ephemeral cards, printed on slightly thicker cardboard stock, were manufactured by the Exhibit Supply Company of Chicago, Illinois.
The details behind some of these cards is lacking. If you know additional information about any of these cards, or possess other cards and would like to share a scan of your vintage treasure, please CONTACT the Louise Brooks Society. Thanks so much for your interest.
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| product card Pullman Bread |
product card (back) Pullman Bread |
arcade card Exhibit Supply Company |
product card circa 1927 |
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| arcade card (clipped) Exhibit Supply Company |
arcade card Exhibit Supply Company |
arcade card Exhibit Supply Company |
arcade card Exhibit Supply Company |
The Weber Baking Co., which was based in New Jersey, issued two sets of cards along with its Pullman style bread. (Presumably, each loaf contained a single card.) One set was gold tinted, and the other silver tinted. The Louise Brooks card was issued as part of the silver set, which contained 45 cards. The set included Pola Negri, Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd and a few of Brooks film co-stars, such as Adolphe Menjou, Thomas Meighan, William Powell, Lois Wilson and Esther Ralston. As the film titles mentioned on other of the silver cards date from either 1926 or 1927, it’s likely the cards date from those years.
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Like the red tinted Street of Forgotten Men card shown on the page of vintage Film Related cards, the four colored arcade cards shown above — as well as the green tinted card depicting a fan — were issued by the Exhibit Supply Company of Chicago, Illinois. Each was intended as a postcard or as a promotional item with a coupon to be clipped.
According to the back of the coupon cards, one could acquire 50 coupon cards, clip their corner, and redeem a prize, such as an Imp bottle, trick pencil, 7″ x 10″ Tom Mix photo, or a Babe Ruth or Charles Lindbergh Lucky Pocket Piece. By sending in 100 coupons, one could obtain a Rubber Dagger, Referee’s Whistle, or a Charlie Chaplin Squirter, among other valuable prizes.
I don’t know much more about these cards beyond what I wrote in a Louise Brooks Society blog on November 14, 2023. Otherwise, here is an informational page about the Exhibit Supply Company from the Made in Chicago Museum, where the company was located. Additionally, here are examples of a whole bunch of the company’s cards from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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| arcade card (clipped back) Exhibit Supply Company |
arcade card (back) Exhibit Supply Company |
LEARN MORE:
Wikipedia has a page on the general history of postcards.
Troy Kirk’s superb Movie Card Website documents cards from around the world.
Another fascinating website is European Film Star Postcards.
Want to start collecting? Vintage cards of all sorts regularly show up on eBay and other online auction sites.