Spotting old books and magazines and dummy newspapers in TV, movies and old photos

[M. Robert Gibson]

Here's Meg Tilly in Psycho II reading In The Belly Of The Beast by Jack Henry Abbott

 

[Extollager]

Wasn't John W. Campbell interested in Sibonetics?

This is from Fiend Without a Face (1958). Sorry about the blurry subtitle.

 

[dask]

Detective Magazines on display as Bela Lugosi buys newspaper in Murder By Television.

 

[HareBrain]

I've only just discovered this thread. A big "like" to you all. And a few gobsmacked "wow"s too.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I was watching Almost Famous recently, I saw this clip and remembered this thread.
So may I present Noah Taylor as Dick Roswell reading Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man

 

[Extollager]

Great catch, MRG, and thanks for awakening this thread.

 

[Extollager]

From The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms:

 

[Extollager]

If only the movie could have paused to take us inside that bookstore for a leisurely half-hour browse of the books, magazines, and newspapers. I'm sure the monster could wait.

 

[Extollager]

The very first Twilight Zone teleplay, "Where Is Everybody?" -- a nice paperback rack display. I identify The World of Suzie Wong, The Viking, God's Little Acre, Grand Mesa, Mystery of the Dead Police, Bread and Wine, and -- two science fiction books -- James Blish's Vor and Philip Jose Farmer's The Green Odyssey.

 

[Extollager]

One more from the same teleplay:

The paperback shown is the British edition, but the cover art is basically the same.

 

[Extollager]

 

[Extollager]

That teleplay was first broadcast on 2 Oct. 1959, by the way.

 

[Extollager]

In #89 above, the paperback just to the left of Bread and Wine — look by the word Wine — has a rocket ship on it. What is that book?? “Planet” might be in the title.

 

[Don]

If a relatively new book in a relatively new TV show counts, Transition by Banks makes an appearance in The Blind Banker episode of Sherlock:

(Sherlock takes out a book from a crate and realises that he’s already got one like it from another crate. He puts them side by side – hard backed copies of Iain Banks’ “Transition”. Opening one of them to page fifteen, he looks at the first word on the page and then narrates the word in exasperated disappointment.)​

​

The Blind Banker

Based on a short story in the Sherlock Holmes series, The Dancing Men

sherlockbbcfandom.weebly.com

 

[Extollager]

In #89, on the second shelf on the rack on the left, there’s Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Miss Pinkerton.

 

[Extollager]

There's the Rinehart book glimpsed in #89 above.

 

[Extollager]

Brinkley's Don't Go Near the Water is the book at the bottom right in #89!

 

[Extollager]

On the Road (next to Bread and Wine)

 

[Extollager]

No Time for Sergeants... so what are we up to, 13 books identified from this teleplay? Can we get any more? Nobody knows what that rocket ship one is? I admit it won't be easy to spot unless maybe someone here has a copy... I have tried several Bing searches but no luck. Doesn't seem to be an anthology edited by Wollheim or Conklin.

 

[Extollager]

That's the closest I could get. But the rocket is on the wrong side of the cover. That's not the right book.