Classic Images

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Classic Images is a monthly American mail-subscription newspaper in magazine layout, founded in 1962 by film collector Sam Rubin, dedicated to pre-1960s motion pictures.

""Classic Images" is published in tabloid format on newsprint. It was first known as The 8mm Collector and later as The Classic Film Collector and at first focussed heavily on reviews and information on silent films available on the then flourishing 8mm film home movie market, the performers and filmmakers of the silent period, and leaders and trends in the current home movie industry. Films available in 16mm received coverage also, although this home movie format was more fully dealt with in an unrelated news journal, The Big Reel.

Since the early 1980s, the newspaper has expanded coverage to include the "golden age of Hollywood", 1930 to 1960, although it continues to regularly feature articles on silent movies and their stars. Many minor film performers in Hollywood history have received their first major profiles in the pages of Classic Images in addition to articles of scores of legendary screen personalities and filmmakers. The magazine also features reviews of books relating to film history, news and reviews of classic films released on video, and articles on film fan conventions with photographs of famous attendees. Classic Images at times features exclusive interviews with vintage film personalities often offering valuable insights into movie history.

Several leading classic-period film historians and critics published some of their first articles for the magazine including Leonard Maltin. All articles were written voluntarily, without compensation; subscriptons and advertising by dealers in the home movie industry supported the printing costs, and a small salary for two or three office assistants: Rubin began publishing while head of a furniture store operation in Pennsylvania, but sold his business to devote his full time and personal resources to his publication. In the early 1970s, he moved to Muscatine, Iowa, where he entered into a printing arrangement with that town's newspaper publishing enterprise, which eventually purchased the publication from Rubin but continued to operate it as a non-profit cultural operation.

After Rubin's retirement in the late 1990s, editorship went to Bob King after an extensive talent search. Rubin continued to write for the magazine until mid-2007, and published his autobiography featuring the history of the magazine, Moving Pictures and Classic Images: Memories of Forty Years in the Vintage Film Hobby, in 2004. In the late 1990s, Classic Images also spun off a quarterly "sister" publication, the magazine Films of the Golden Age, also edited by King.

Classic Images made national news in 1992 when one of its writers discovered silent film legend Vilma Bánky had passed away unnoticed the previous year. Since the mid 1990s, the covers of issues of Classic Images usually feature reproductions of vintage movie posters. Previously, covers were original color illustrations of classic film personalities or characters.

The publication has been preserved on microfilm and may be found in university libraries. Since the mid-1980s, there has been a website, largely devoted to promotion of "Classic Images" and "Films of the Golden Age" as print publications.