Hand Painted Lobby Art.
The Picture Show Man
Poncan, OK, discovered over 30 examples of hand painted movie poster
art during a recent renovation. Apparently, during Hollywood's
"Golden Age" and before, it was not unusual for Hollywood studios to
supply theaters with photos and advertising samples that local artists
could use as models for creating their own original advertisements for
upcoming movies. You can see some of these works at:
http://artsplaceponcacity.org/ex.html
I've never heard of this practice, and was wondering if anyone knew
how common these hand painted lobby posters were, and when local
artists began supplementing the promotional material supplied by the
studios?
The Picture Show Man
http://www.pictureshowman.com
Dedicated to exploring the history of motion pictures . . .
Darren
restroom waiting rooms.
Themple Theatre in Saginaw has some about 20 years ago.
--
Darren Nemeth
dnem...@giant-squid-audio-lab.com
Owner of "Giant Squid Audio Lab" - Specialists in durable, high fidelity
microphones
for discriminating analog and digital recording enthusiasts.
http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com
"The Picture Show Man" <KPR...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1170796073.4...@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
J. Theakston
> I've never heard of this practice, and was wondering if anyone knew
> how common these hand painted lobby posters were, and when local
> artists began supplementing the promotional material supplied by the
> studios?
Fairly common for theaters that had the money or prestige to do it.
The posterized style that you find in almost all of these posters is
very beautiful, and the quality translated well when the custom poster
vogue went out in the 1940s for the equally beautiful and highly
manufacturable silkscreen 30"x40"s and 40"X60"s National Screen
Service was producing.
The most famous of these custom poster were those of Batiste Madalena,
who worked for the Eastman Theater in Rochester. There's a good book
that features some of his best work in full color, called "Movie
Posters: The Paintings of Batiste Madelena".
One of the most striking examples of custom poster I've seen was a
custom-sized poster for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, that
reportedly came out of the Rialto in NY. Great image of Karloff (?!)
in the foreground, with a silhouette of the Wolf Man in the
background. Anachronistic as if may be, it's still a great poster.
J. Theakston
http://centraltheater.blogspot.com
mikeg...@gmail.com
store once c. 2000. I was about to buy the one from While the City
Sleeps (the Chaney, not the Fritz Lang) when my cushy dot-com job
ended. Damn.
William Hooper
days had art & displays done locally. In trade magazines of the time,
there are ads for art supplies for cutting letters, etc. for theaters'
in-house artists.
I was running some lines in a large late 20s theatre under a balcony,
& found that the walls of a storeroom on the other side of an
originally unfinished stud wall were not cheap paneling but actually
these painted panels for features flipped with the unpainted side
toward the storage area. Like most promotional material, they were
considered to have no value after their original use. The latest one
was for William Powell's "A Man of the World" (1931).
Shortly afterwards, a group came in & "restored", basically
redecorated to one very garden-club lady's taste, the theatre. Ripped
out & to the dumpster went all those posters on panels, with a lot of
other stuff.
The Picture Show Man
told the Poncan Theatre will be publishing a catalogue of their newly
discovered Hand Painted Lobby Art in the near future. These are such
wonderful treasures that I shudder when I read how much of this unique
artwork was thrown away. Shouldn't someone write a history of this
little known component of motion picture advertising?