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.
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The pressbook reproduction was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
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.
Overall: Height: 11.000 inches (27.94 cm) | Width: 17.000 inches (43.18 cm)
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.
Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the movie “Pastor Hall” (1940)