DALLAS, TX.- Robert Schenk had parts in various theatrical productions — including a key role in Life With Father, which for 25 years held the record as the longest-running Broadway show. Ultimately, he decided the stage was not for him, but through his connections in the entertainment world, he was able to put together an astounding collection of original movie posters, autographs, publicity photos and other memorabilia.

The son of two professional musicians who hosted salon concerts in their Upper West Side brownstone, Schenk had a lifelong appreciation of music and the arts, a passion later shared by his wife, Carla. They lived near Lincoln Center but kept the family home, renting rooms at charitable rates to artists, curators and music students. The brownstone also held their collections of autographs, opera recordings, librettos, musical scores, toys and other memorabilia. When the last tenant moved out in 2019, a trove of almost-forgotten vintage movie posters was discovered. Heritage Auctions is proud to bring to the auction block stunning finds from the Robert and Carla Schenk Collection at the Nov. 20–21 Movie Posters Signature® Auction, as well as other treasures including select material from the Estate of Keif Fromm.

Standing especially tall among the Schenk bounty is a fresh-to-market one-sheet from the 1938 rerelease of the 1933 classic King Kong. This beautiful 27-1/4-inch-by-41-inch poster is one of just three copies known by Heritage. Though originals are rare, the image is readily recognizable. A Sausalito, California, printing company called Portal Publications reproduced this image as an extremely popular poster for sale in novelty shops and by mail order. Likely unable to get hold of a 1933 sheet, this version is for many movie fans the most familiar version of the iconic movie’s promotional art.

Other King Kong items from the Schenk collection include a rare original release insert poster and a massive 1942 six-sheet poster that has never been offered for public sale. A towering three-sheet poster for the 1933 sequel Son of Kong showing Glenn Cravath’s artwork in beautiful full color, a 1933 Son of Kong one-sheet and a scarce title lobby card — a Heritage first — promoting the big ape’s offspring round out the Schenks’ Kong memorabilia.

The Schenk Collection also includes a beautiful one-sheet for Paramount’s lavish 1934 Cecil B. DeMille-directed epic Cleopatra, a vibrant original studio three-sheet for the 1938 Warner Bros. adventure romp The Adventures of Robin Hood offered for only the second time at Heritage in 20 years of poster auctions, and the landmark one-sheet for the swashbuckling 1935 Warner Bros. classic Captain Blood, to name just a few other outstanding opportunities for movie buffs.

A three-sheet for the 1947 rerelease of Universal’s 1931 Bela Lugosi-starring Dracula — the sole surviving large-format poster for any release of the original Universal Dracula — is an exceptional piece from the Estate of Keif Fromm and an unparalleled opportunity to own a unique and imposing piece of cinematic history. Another three-sheet from a Universal creature feature, 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, is one of only two known to exist.

“Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was the first Universal monster mashup movie,” says Zach Pogemiller, Associate Movie Posters Director at Heritage. “To reinvigorate the franchise, Universal started upping the creature quotient in their films. It’s an incredibly rare and spectacular poster. Two mythic monsters: What more could you want?”

In addition to posters for classic monster movies, this auction has plenty to offer collectors of Western movie memorabilia — starting with an unrestored one-sheet for Stagecoach, the John Ford-John Wayne collaboration that shaped the American Western.

“It’s the ultimate Western movie poster,” Pogemiller says. “This is the best surviving example we’ve ever encountered. Most copies in the collector market have had professional conservation, but this one is exactly as it was issued over 85 years ago.”

A generation later, Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Western” The Good, The Bad and the Ugly would conclude the Italian director’s “Dollars Trilogy” and reinvigorate the classic American genre. Befitting the epic scope of the film that made Clint Eastwood a star is this 24-sheet billboard from the movie’s Italian premiere in Rome, 8-3/4 feet by 18-1/2 feet of artwork by Franco Fiorenzi and Michelangelo Papuzza capturing the operatic intensity and moral ambiguity, the film’s title displayed, of course, in its original Italian: Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo.

Other highlights from the auction include, but are certainly not limited to, the British Quad poster for the first Hammer Horror picture, 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein, as well as that film’s British advance double crown poster, both available for the first time at Heritage or any major American auction house; the only example of the original release pressbook for Tod Browning’s subversive sideshow drama Freaks; and the first poster ever created to advertise a commercial motion picture exhibition, a Marcellin Auzolle-designed large-format piece for Auguste and Jean-Louis Lumière’s premiere screening at the Salon Indien in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895.