About these Cards
50 cards. From Great Britain, 1935.
Each card measures 1-3/8" X 2-5/8 inches.
Green text on back of original vintage cards -- There is an authorized reproduction of this set from the Card Collector's Society which has red text on back and is plainly marked reproduction.
Not a movie set, but a set covering general British popular culture of the time and including figures from the worlds of royalty, politics, literature, music and sport alongside the few movie cards in the set.
Those movie cards are numbers 20-25 of this 50 card set and include Mae West and Greta Garbo.
The key to this set is Adolf Hitler with other popularly collected cards including Chiang Kai-Shek, FDR and Duke Ellington.
Despite the presence of the movie cards I think my favorite is card #49 Zaro Agha, "The modern Methuselah," who claimed to be 157 years of age upon his death in 1934. According to Wikipedia later research showed Agha to be only 97, but he must have had more than a few people buying his story to have managed cardboard immortality!
Another fifty figures were featured in Mitchell's "A Gallery of 1935" set issued the following year.
Available for purchase in the Immortal Ephemera Store:
Gallery and text checklist follow sales listings.
Gallery of Mitchell's Gallery of 1934 Cards
Just click on any image to open to full size and from there you can scroll through the entire set. Both sides of all 50 cards are shown. A text checklist follows the gallery.
Mitchell's "A Gallery of 1934" Checklist:
1 - T.R.H. The Duke and Duchess of Kent
2 - H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth
3 - Albert, King of the Belgians
4 - The Emperor of Manchuria (Manchukuo)
5 - King Alexander of Yugoslavia and M. Barthou
6 - General Chiang Kai-Shek
7 - President Von Hindenburg
8 - Adolf Hitler
9 - Dr. Dollfuss
10 - President Roosevelt
11 - M. Raymond Poincare
12 - Major Leslie Hore-Belisha
13 - Colonel John Buchan, M.P., C.H., D.C.L.
14 - George Bernard Shaw
15 - J.B. Priestley
16 - Sir Henry Wood
17 - Beniamino Gigli
18 - Duke Ellington
19 - Julian Wylie
20 - Sir Cedric Hardwicke
21 - Elisabeth Bergner
22 - Alexander Korda
23 - Charles Laughton
24 - Greta Garbo
25 - Mae West
26 - "Miss Europe" (Esther Toivenen)
27 - Nancy Jupp
28 - Henry Cotton
29 - Mrs. Andrew Holm
30 - W. Lawson Little
31 - The Maharajah of Rajpipla
32 - Hon. Dorothy Paget
33 - Gordon Richards
34 - Fred Perry
35 - Dorothy Round
36 - J.E. Lovelock
37 - Don Bradman
38 - Jack Petersen
39 - Alex James
40 - Harold S. Vanderbilt
41 - H. Scott-Paine
42 - "Freddie" Dixon
43 - Lieut. F. Agello
44 - C.W.A. Scott (Charles William Anderson Scott) & T. Campbell Black (Tom Campbell Black)
45 - Professor Auguste Piccard
46 - Lord Nuffield (William R. Morris)
47 - Lord Trenchard
48 - Canon H.R.L. Sheppard, C.H., D.D. (Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard)
49 - Zaro Agha
50 - Alexandre Stavisky