This is a book trailer for the book “Miss Mizzou: A Life Beyond Comics” that I created. Let me explain a little background info about the trailer.

In the trailer I use several images from my book, but I also use footage of Milton Caniff that I found on the internet archive that comes from the Prelinger Archvies in San Francisco. The film is around 11 minutes and silent. Given some of the images, I’d place the footage as being shot around 1947, but I might be off a bit.

I re-cut the footage of Caniff to make it look as if he’s creating Miss Mizzou in 1952, but this is not the case. Caniff in the film is actually inking a stylish portrait of the character Madame Lynx. Earlier in the film we see a larger portrait which he labels Lynx:

Later still, he’s drawing a full body portrait of the women we saw before who was labeled Lynx.

The part that I used in the trailer is the lower portion of the drawing:

If you squint a little bit, the legs and shoes look a little bit like Miss Mizzou, so that’s why I put that footage in the book trailer. I hope I didn’t confuse anyone by using this footage, but I thought it was too good not to use somehow.

The music that was used for the trailer is a track that comes with the iMovie software, and it’s called “44th Street.” I couldn’t find much information about how this music came about, or which “44th Street” it was referencing, but I think it fits in with the character well. Oddly enough, when Marilyn Monroe moved to New York, she studied at the Actors Studio at 432 West 44th Street under Lee Strasberg.

(Updated 11/05/14)