By BOB THOMAS - from WashingtonPost.comThe Associated Press
Friday, June 29, 2007; 9:32 AM
LOS ANGELES -- During the early years of motion pictures, theaters across the country shunned studio-produced promotional displays and instead hired their own artists to paint movie posters that would better entice ticket buyers.
Because they had to work ahead of the film's schedule, most of the artists never even saw the movies they depicted and had to rely on publicity photographs _ or just their own imaginations.
Then after the movies finished their runs _ usually in a week _ new posters would appear and the old ones would disappear, never to be seen by the public again.
Until now.
This weekend, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is releasing "Now Playing," an oversized coffee-table book jammed with full-page reproductions of the best of lobby art.
An exhibit containing original versions of the posters also has opened for limited showings at the Academy's Mary Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood.
See "Now Playing" on Barnes and Noble.com-
