Yes, Easter was a week ago, but I just got around to looking for ads for the silent Cecil DeMille classic King of Kings which I watched Easter morning. As with many ads of the silent era, these are word-heavy advertisements with limited use of images, though the ads typically became less wordy as the movies spread from the East and West coasts inward.
This ad from the Los Angeles Times (5/18/27) is for the Hollywood premiere of King of Kings, and also for the opening of the legendary Grauman's Chinese Theatre, with D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford in attendance.
In Cincinnati, the film opened in October of '27 accompanied by a live orchestra, and being heralded as "not a movie release," i.e., not likely to show up in the smaller neighborhood movie houses anytime soon, all the more reason to head downtown for it.
A year later, it shows up in Phoenix, Arizona, with some photos this time. This was most likely the shorter version which DeMille prepared for wide release, 30 minutes shorter than the big city version.
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