I'll reveal myself as the lazy proprietor of the
Harry Oliver http://www.klaxo.net/hofc/hofc.htm -
Desert Rat Scrap Book http://drsb.klaxo.net (DRSB) site. (I wrote the Wikipedia articles on those topics too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Oliver and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Rat_Scrap_Book.) Harry Oliver was an early Hollywood art director, working on such as Ben-Hur, Scarface, Mark of the Vampire, Viva Villa! and The Good Earth, and was nominated for the very first Oscars. He designed the Wild West village for the 1936 San Diego World's Fair. And for a couple decades after WW2, he published a most peculiar semi-quarterly journal, the Desert Rat Scrap Book, "America's only 5-page newspaper, and the only one you can open in the wind". Those interested in printed Americana should be as fascinated with this as I was when I first encountered it so long ago.
Leo Carrillo told me that M.G.M.'s European offices rent their copies of Viva Villa to all the countries of the world. They rent the film when the people of a country get "REVOLUTION HUNGRY."
—Harry Oliver, 1962
Alas, I can't really provide full scans to upload here, even though his work is specifically not copyrighted. Why not? Well, they're not comic books, even though they contain cartoons by Harry and others. But mainly because I don't have a scanner for 17x22 in (44x55 cm) pages! (Check this Arizona Highways article
http://www.klaxo.net/hofc/other/other.htm#ariz to see how the paper unfolds.) The DRSB site has cover scans for all issues, and some page 2 and 3 scans; and I transcribed the text of many issues. Look around there, and you'll find MP3s from an old 33 rpm LP of Harry reading some of his stories. I've also included materials for some of the themes Harry featured: Death Valley; ghost towns; the Lost Ship of the Desert; Peg-Leg Smith's lost gold mine; etc. Browse and enjoy!
