I recently acquired the above novelization signed by George Romero for my collection and it's a very interesting story. So much so, that I had to make this blog post to tell the story of this acquisition and then to also tell you all a bit about these books and all the information that I have gathered about them so far, in words and pictures. I'll tell you more about my book later, but first let's dig into my history with these books starting at the beginning...
The story begins years ago, in a galaxy far far away. I'm kidding. But it was legit, a long time ago. I guess this all really starts with my love of DAWN OF THE DEAD. I first watched it after my family rented it on VHS from a local video store in Brick, NJ where I lived back in 1983. I remember it vividly. I may not have been paying attention to it at first, so my first memory of it does not begin at the very start of the film, it starts at the scene where the blonde zombie played by Jeanie Jefferies, is attacking Roger in the truck at the truck depot. That scene caught my attention and from then on, I was hooked into watching the rest of the movie. It's funny that decades later, I would become very good friends with Jeanie and get her into appearing at conventions. My first memory of the film involves her, it's very weird. Although I don't have a lot of other memories of that viewing, the idea of living in a shopping mall really stuck with me, it intrigued me much more than the cartoon like violence or the zombies. That's the part that oddly interested me the most as the age of 8. I was already a lover of horror films for years at that point. A couple years went by and I always thought of DAWN OF THE DEAD fondly and then one day I spotted the VHS of it in the local Jamesway department store and I asked my mom to buy it for me. She did. Then I brought it home and from that day forward, my obsession with DAWN OF THE DEAD began in earnest, more than ever before. I must have watched the movie four times that first day that I had that tape. I loved it and I still have that very tape to this day. I have many stories of sharing DAWN with friends and showing it to them for the first time, and I'm sure many of you also did the same thing growing up. So that was the beginning of my love and obsession with DAWN OF THE DEAD.
As the years went on, I eventually started going to horror conventions, starting with Fangoria's Weekend Of Horrors in NYC every January starting in 1990. I even got the documentary DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD at one of those early conventions, it's the amazing documentary all about George Romero's MARTIN and the filming of DAWN OF THE DEAD. I mention these two VHS tape acquisitions because I think they should be considered my first collectibles related to DAWN OF THE DEAD. In more recent years, I started collecting anything that I could find related to DAWN. My collecting of all things related to DAWN, is what led me to this recent book acquisition which is the main topic of this post. I've been religiously collecting things from DAWN for the past 17 years at this point. Now that we got the very beginning of everything stated and out of the way, lets get into the nitty gritty about these novelizations.
Ok, with it now established that I collect anything related to DAWN OF THE DEAD, this is what happened concerning these books. As a collector, I'm always on the hunt for new or exciting items and sometimes I see some interesting things, I don't buy them all, but even if I don't buy them, I may take note of the various things I see for future reference. Maybe 3 or 4 years ago, I saw the following DAWN novelization for sale on eBay. I did not buy it, but I took note of it. It was personalized to Renee. I don't remember if the description of the item mentioned the full name of the person or not, but being very knowledgeable about DAWN, I remembered that a Renee Furst was creditied to have worked as a publicist on DAWN OF THE DEAD. She is even mentioned in many bits of their press materials from the time too. So I figured that this must have been her book. Here are some of the pictures from that eBay auction:
The inscription reads:
"To Renee
Sorry to expose you to all these bloody horrors -
Love you
George"
With an inscription like that, being so personal, I think it's fair to think that he knew this person and that it was probably Renee Furst who worked on publicizing DAWN OF THE DEAD. Around the same time that I saw this book on eBay, I saw that Ralph Langer, who was a zombie in DAWN, also had a signed book from around that time. This book was given to him by George and also signed by George. Here's his book:
"To Ralph
thanks for being a Zombie
All the best
George A. Romero
2/20/79"
After seeing both of these books, I was very intrigued. Maybe George gave out a lot of these books to people who worked on or for the movie in some capacity. It looks like a strong possibility. Maybe I'd like to have one for my collection...
Another year goes by, then on May 20, 2018 Gaylen Ross, who starred as Francine in DAWN OF THE DEAD posted this photo on her facebook page.
The inscription reads:
"Gaylen
thanks for being a great FRAN
Let's hope it's a big hit, and the first project of many -
Love,
George"
Ok, by now, I'm definitely looking for one of these inscribed books for my collection. There have to be more out there. Now we jump ahead to the present, to April 2021. Since seeing these other examples of inscribed novelizations, I had not seen another until last month. One day, as I searched for DAWN OF THE DEAD stuff on eBay, I saw that somebody posted one of these novelizations with a personal inscription by George. Here are the pictures of the book from that auction:
"To Frank & Alice,
In appreciation of your faith and support
Let's hope this will be the beginning
of a streak providing Fun & Net
after Taxes -
All the best
George"
The seller had it posted as an auction, with bids starting at $250 as seen here:
After I first noticed this auction, I began watching it, to see what happens with it, and to see if it might sell, or even go down in price if nobody bids on it. Initially I thought that maybe this book was given to either zombie Frank A. Serrao or possibly zombie Frank Maimone. I though to myself, I'll have to look up information on them to see if either had a wife named Alice. Then I could determine who's book it was. A few days go by and I didn't have the time to look into those guys. Then maybe two days before the auction was to end, I thought that maybe I should look on IMDB to see if there were any other Franks listed in the movie's credits. It also occurred to me, at the same time that the term, "Net after taxes" is a movie term or more to the point a financial term used by movie people that he would have used with investors on the film. The full term is "Net income after taxes" it's a financial term used to describe a company's profit after all taxes have been paid. Net income after taxes represents profit or earnings after all expenses have been deducted from revenue. So this couple of people had to be investors, we're talking about profit here. So on IMDB I immediately look at the very last credit category under DAWN OF THE DEAD, the category of "Thanks" This is usually where special contributors or investors may be listed if they did not get a producer credit. And in that category, I spot Frank Rubinstein. Wow, this may be a relation to the movie's producer, Richard Rubinstein. Now I was really intrigued. I then went and pulled up Safari on my phone and Googled Frank Rubinstein in New York since I knew Richard was from NY. I think the second or third result was the obituary of Frank Rubinstein in the New York Times from September 29, 2005. It listed a wife named Alice and three children, two of which are Richard and Donald. BINGO. Frank and Alice are the mother and father of Richard and Donald Rubinstein. I just figured out that this book was given to Frank and Alice Rubinstein for being investors in DAWN OF THE DEAD. I had to know more and I had to have this book, so I messaged the seller of the book on eBay. I wanted to try to get the seller to end the auction early so that I didn't have to bid against anyone else, I also didn't want to pay $250 or more through a bidding war if somebody else wanted it. Here's how that interaction went as I started off with an offer:
I made an offer of $100, thinking that we could meet somewhere in the middle. He replied:
As you can see, the seller has some facts wrong. Richard Rubinstein was the producer of the movie, not Donald, but he mentions that it was to their parents, which I already know. This information the seller just gave me was not included in the description of the auction, it may have helped it sell if he had included it, even being wrong. The seller also does not know movie terms and assumed that this refers to the Rubinstein's parents helping George with a tax problem when Laurel Entertainment became a public company. The company actually went public many years after the release of DAWN in the early 80's, not when this book would have been given out. While what the seller has said is obviously wrong, he does say things that he would not know if it was all being made up whole cloth, he confirmed what I already figured out on my own, whose book it was. He's just assuming things or he got the stories wrong or jumbled up, but the nuggets of info in there tell me that this book is legit and came from the parents of Richard Rubinstein. Of course I bought the book, hiding my excitement about this fantastic find.
Then I asked one more question:
The Seller's response:
I was satisfied that the book was legitimately given to Frank and Alice Rubinstein by George Romero because they invested in DAWN OF THE DEAD. I was also satisfied by the lower price the seller offered me of $175. I paid the seller and waited for the book to arrive. As I kept thinking of this great score, I then remembered that during Richard Rubinstein's commentary on the Extended Version of DAWN OF THE DEAD, he talks about the various investors that put money in the movie and that he even mentioned what his dad invested. The funny thing was that all this happened while I was at work one morning. I decided that I wanted to give that commentary a listen and possibly transcribe it for inclusion in this story, which I had already figured that I would detail in depth on this very blog. Fortunately, I have that commentary track along with all of DAWN's commentary tracks on a CD that I can play at any time in my car. I actually listen to them from time to time. So I put on the Richard Rubinstein commentary track and transcribed it while I worked.
From the Perry Martin moderated DAWN OF THE DEAD Extended Cut Commentary featuring
Richard Rubinstein:
"My father invested $25,000 when he would never invest in George and I, before that, because he told me that we didn’t have a business, and by definition a business meant a five-year plan, and so George and I didn’t have a five year plan, and so my father would never invest with us, when we came along with DAWN OF THE DEAD as an investment, that was a different category, there he expected to lose his money, he could afford to take the flyer, like going to a football game and making a bet, ok and he bet in that context, there was a business situation that he understood, that it was high risk, chances are you will lose your money, and once in a while they strike the mother load, and you do well. He didn’t have any philosophical problem with that but when George and I asked for money to pay the rent and to run our company day to day, that kind of investment made no sense to him whatsoever. My mother invested I think $3,000." - Richard Rubinstein
So there it is, that's my story about George Romero's personally signed DAWN OF THE DEAD novelizations and the one that I just bought and now own in my collection. There are a couple more pics of it below. I hope that you found this story interesting and that you find this book as cool as I do. Maybe I won't take another four years in-between posts here. We shall see. Until then....
STAY SCARED!
Larry DeVincentz
