DALLAS, TX.- When Heritage Auctions rounds up the usual suspects for its August 28–29 Movie Posters Signature® Auction, one large-format showpiece will stand especially tall in the lineup: the best original-release poster for the greatest film of all time. What’s more, this linen-backed six-sheet poster for Casablanca is in the best condition of all the examples of its kind that have ever come through Heritage.
“This shouldn’t exist,” says Zach Pogemiller, Associate Movie Posters Director at Heritage. “Very few of these posters have survived because they were pasted to walls and then scraped off after the movie’s run or covered over with the next one. Theaters bought them and cut them up to make displays. There was no reason to keep a poster for a movie that people could no longer see.”
Of course, more than eight decades after its original run, people can and do still watch the film that won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture and has consistently been ranked at or near the top of best-of lists ever since. Pogemiller calls the film “an ambassador to classic black-and-white movies” for modern audiences, the first such picture watched and beloved by many a budding cinephile — himself as a teenager included.
Only a handful of the original-release six-sheet promotional posters are known to exist, and this is only the second Heritage Auctions has offered. A previous example set the American auction record for a non-horror movie poster when it sold in 2020 at Heritage for $384,000. Pogemiller says this one matches its quality, and in fact set a record price itself in the early 1980s. The vibrant, unenhanced color shows this poster has held up nearly as well as the film’s legacy. For one serious movie lover, this relic from the Golden Age will be the beginning — or culmination — of a beautiful collection.
A three-sheet for Greta Garbo’s 1930 Anna Christie, her first full talking picture, boasts a vibrant portrait of the star in Art Deco style. Interestingly, while most posters emphasized her speaking role, this one makes no mention of it and even has the word “Silent” printed along the bottom border, the popular theory being this poster was for a proposed non-talking version of the film that never materialized.
The first pressbook for the original release of Universal’s 1931 blockbuster Frankenstein at any major auction house in the internet era is a fascinating look at the early Golden Age promotional strategies used by theater owners — “showmen” — to entice moviegoers. One of those suggestions — to cut up posters to create custom displays — will horrify modern preservationists and collectors with the effectiveness of a jump scare, as it spotlights the disposability and subsequent rarity of original promotional material from the era. One common stunt was to emphasize how potentially dangerous the movie could be to “the nervous,” with warnings advising those with weak hearts not to watch the movie and going so far as to suggest ushers be provided with smelling salts “for people who get over-excited on seeing ‘Frankenstein.’” Also among the offered advertisements is a cut-out puzzle, the jumbled parts of an image that could be cut out and assembled into the face of the monster by any potential moviegoer who wanted to echo Frankenstein’s boast: “I made him! … I made him with my own hands!”
A fold-out newsprint “Ballyhoo” insert featuring various newspaper ad mats is included. It amounts to a poster larger than a half-sheet covered in incredible artwork expressly made for this purpose. The book’s bold two-color cover with the monster charging the viewer, breaking through a red background, would make a compelling display itself as well.
The first unrestored Frankenstein montage lobby card to appear at auction in nearly a decade would be an electrifying centerpiece of any collection. Encapsulated by CGC and graded a 9.2 Near Mint, it is the highest-graded example on the registry and remarkably well-preserved for its 95 years of age.
Another highly regarded lobby card, and a fellow CGC registry-topping example, is the Very Fine+ scene card depicting a looming Bela Lugosi as the Count in the definitive 1931 Dracula, Frankenstein’s classic predecessor.
A 4K restoration of Christopher Lee-starring 1958 Hammer Films classic The Horror of Dracula — complete with newly discovered restored censored scenes — will be invited into theaters and homes this Halloween. To celebrate the occasion, a serious collector could hardly do better than adding to their collection the French Grande for Horror of Dracula by illustrator Guy-Gérard Noël, depicting Lee’s caped Dracula and Melissa Stribling against the haunting silhouette of Castle Dracula.
The 24-sheet billboard from the Italian premiere of Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Western” Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo — known in America as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly — is an appropriately epic size (approximately 105 inches by 223 inches) in keeping with the monumental impact of the film that made Clint Eastwood a star.
