Mapping the Dutch film magazine market, 1920-1960

Thunnis Van Oort explores the history of the film magazine in the context of the Dutch film industry, roughly between 1920 and 1960. The most thriving era of the Dutch film magazine was during the interwar decades when entrepreneurs like Pier Westerbaan combined the roles of reporter, editor, publisher, and printer in producing a fan magazine. Judging from the availability and survival rate of Dutch movie magazines, the period after the Second World War proved to be less prosperous: popular film periodicals had relatively short lifespans, and after 1952, no Dutch fan magazine of substance appeared for decades. A number of daily newspapers and women’s magazines had shaken their pre-war reserve about reporting on movies and stars, and their weekly film rubrics proved heavy competition in the, apparently, limited Dutch market for illustrated press coverage on cinema.