Parkway Central's Rare Book Department is mounting a new exhibition of distinctive movie theater lobby cards, now through June 17. “Foyer Entertainment: Movie Lobby Cards from the 1930s-1960s”offers a rare glimpse of this forgotten Hollywood art form with its display of more than 50 lobby cards selected from the Free Library’s extensive Theatre Collection.

Movie posters are considered one of the earliest forms of movie art. In the mid 1910s, as bigger movie theatres began replacing smaller, make-shift nickelodeons, movie house managers requested a new type of poster to showcase inside their larger theatre lobbies and foyers. Hollywood studios responded by introducing 11×14 inch lobby cards—movie advertisements designed to lure perspective moviegoers.

In conjuction with the exhibition, the Rare Book Department will be open for special Saturday hours on March 19 from 1:00-5:00 p.m. At 2:00 p.m., KYW movie critic and La Salle University film professor Bill Wine will present “Based on the Book: Best-Seller Cinema,” a discussion of the psychological differences between the reading and viewing experience, and an examination of several written works—some indelible, some insufferable—that have provided the source material for thousands of movies.

The Rare Book Department is open from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, with free, public tours of the General Collections beginning daily at 11:00 a.m.