Unknown designer. Paramount Pictures Presents She Asked For It, 1937

Item #: NCMA060

Unknown designer. Paramount Pictures Presents She Asked For It, 1937

Color lithograph poster

41 x 27 1/4 Inches

Permanent collection - Gift of Mrs. Blanche Circker (2001.1.19)

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world and is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, CA. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company. Hungarian-born founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman, he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time.

During the Depression years, Zukor’s over-expansion and use of overvalued Paramount stock for purchases led the company into receivership in 1933. A bank-mandated reorganization team, led by John Hertz and Otto Kahn, kept the company intact, and, miraculously, Zukor was kept on. In 1935, Paramount-Publix went bankrupt. In June 1935, John E. Otterson became president, and in 1936, Barney Balaban replaced Otterson, and Zukor was bumped up to Chairman of the Board. In this role, Zukor reorganized the company as Paramount Pictures, Inc. and was able to successfully bring the studio out of bankruptcy.

Directed by Erle C. Kenton and written by Frederick J. Jackson and Theodore Reeves, She Asked For It tells the tale of Dwight Stanford and his wife Penny, a pair of spendthrifts who are de-pendent for support on Dwight’s rich uncle. When the uncle is the victim of a hit-and-run accident they find themselves cut out of the will and without income. Dwight starts writing mystery novels about a fictional detective named Steven Knight, which become instant hits and the money pours in. Dwight then conceives the idea of posing as Knight in order to get into the detective business to obtain new story ideas leading to a real life case involving accident specialists.

-FB