CLASSIC GOLD

Mike Hawks has been accumulating movie memorabilia since the late ‘60s. He supported his “habit” by working at the poster counters at Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee in the Valley and more lately at Larry Edmund’s Book Store on Hollywood Boulevard. His personal collection is rumored around the collecting community to be stunning.

Now there’s proof: Pomegranate Press is coming out with a coffee-table book, “Lobby Cards: The Classic Films” ($45 for a portfolio edition, $29.95 hardcover) with a foreword by Joan Bennett and text by Kathryn Leigh Scott and 74 of Hawks’ cards.

(Although many distributors aren’t producing lobby cards anymore and rely on the sell-power of the usual 27 by 41-inch “one sheets,” in times past each film also was released with a set of eight 11x14 cards.)

Among the classic cards in the book (commencing with D. W. Griffith’s “Broken Blossoms,” 1919, with Lillian Gish): “Phantom of the Opera” (1925), “The General” (1927), “Animal Crackers” (1930), “Frankenstein” (1931), “The Music Box” (1932), “Flying Down to Rio,” (1933), “It Happened One Night” (1934), “Jezebel” (1938), etc.

It’s tough to put dollar figures on the cards because of their rarity. But Hawks figures his title card of “Dracula” (shown here) is worth about $5,000. He bought it eight years ago for $35.

No, don’t ask. He’s keeping it.