Search for a star... the lost showbusiness bible that could be lurking in your attic

A roadshow celebrating 100 years of Spotlight won't be complete unless the first 1927 editions can be found

- Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media editor

Alfred Hitchcock once said: “The Spotlight is as essential to the artist as makeup.” He was endorsing an early edition of a publication that, for almost 100 years, has laid out the contact details and photographs of all the talent in British showbusiness.

“The Spotlight’s most comprehensive information - and the useful arrangement of its supplements and cross-index — make it really indispensable,” the filmmaker went on to explain in his formal testimonial.

The famed directory, based near Covent Garden, in central London, is still bringing together casting directors and agents, and will mark its centenary next year with a travelling “roadshow” destined for regional hotel foyers. It will also hold public open days. Only one thing stands in the way of the plans: the first two editions of Spotlight - from spring and autumn 1927 - are missing.

Spotlight’s managing director Matt Hood and his colleagues are now asking the public to search for surviving copies. They might be inside a forgotten cardboard box in someone’s cellar or loft. “It is likely they are stored in the home of descendants of an agent rather than an actor,” he said.

A copy of each missing edition is held by the British Library, but they are water-damaged and hard to read.

“Sadly, the pages are stuck together,” said Pippa Harrison, industry adviser and ambassador at Spotlight. “The editions we are looking for have a simple brown cover with a round Spotlight logo and will be marked ‘edition 1’ or ‘edition 2’. It looks like a plain directory, but inside will be the pictures of some of the earliest stars of talking pictures.

“This was 1927, the year of the groundbreaking film The Jazz Singer, and sound had just come in.”