Who’s your favourite Bond? Which is the best Star Wars franchise? What about the most popular Hitchcock film?
Whatever cult hit takes your fancy, Prop Store’s upcoming 25 June will have you covered: over 440 cinema posters are going under the hammer, from the vintage and rare to the modern and unique.
The most expensive poster in the sale (for it is scarce, unrestored and in excellent condition) is this UK Quad for the first James Bond film, Dr No (1962). The poster illustration is by American artist Mitchell Hooks and depicts Sean Connery as James Bond in a typical and iconic Bond pose.
Another popular franchise is, of course, Star Wars.
This linen-backed UK Quad ‘Non-Oscars’ poster is from the debut of Star Wars in 1977. The Non-Oscars format was used at the UK premiere and West End promotion shortly afterwards, however the Oscars variant poster was subsequently used for the wider UK distribution.
Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz wanted to trial a poster design that elevated the personalities of the cast, and this Tom Chantrell composition was the chosen result.
A decade earlier, this linen-backed UK Quad ‘Style-A’ poster, designed by Bill Wiggins, came about.
Fans will also appreciate the joke ‘Adults over 16 should be accompanied by children’, found in the bottom right.
Stepping away from major franchises and towards cult hits, we find this linen-backed German A0 poster for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). While the Robert-McGinnis-designed American poster favoured a full-length image of Audrey Hepburn, in this version German artist Bruno Rehak adapted the design to provide a head and shoulders focus.
Another dark-haired leading lady of the mid-twentieth century is Elizabeth Taylor, however if you look closer you’ll see that she is not the woman depicted in this UK Quad poster for Carry On Cleo (1964).
This ‘banned’ poster by Tom Chantrell (who also designed the above Star Wars poster) resulted in a legal case: Fox Studios claimed that the poster design plagiarised their Cleopatra (1963) poster (Carry On Cleo was clearly spoofing the Fox film).
In response, Chantrell claimed that his Cleo poster was a parody and not a copy, however the case was lost and this Carry On Cleo Quad design was banned and its posters were meant to be destroyed. This example, in exceptional condition, managed to survive the witch hunt however, and is a very rare example as a result.
Another scandal, though this time of a moral, rather than legal, variety, is the cult-book (and film) Lolita, written by Vladimir Navokov. The story was exceptionally scandalous for the time, not only for its sexual and erotic exploits but primarily for those characters involved in the exploits: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, literary professor Humbert Humbert, and his his 12-year-old stepdaughter Dolores, whom he eventually becomes sexually involved with and whom he nicknames Lolita.
The linen-back UK Quad poster for the 1962 film directed by Stanley Kubrick depicts the image of Sue Lyon wearing love-shaped sunglasses and licking a lollipop, which was taken by the famous photographer Bert Stein.
As a reminder, Prop Store’s cinema poster sale is taking place on 25 June. Find the poster design from your favourite hit while you can!
