Vintage Movie Poster Offering At Heritage Auctions Tops $1.7 Million
Poster For D.W. Griffiths Civil War Classic Film Brings $74,687
Despite being one of the most influential motion pictures of all time, posters from The Birth of a Nation movie are almost never seen at auction, said Grey Smith, director of vintage posters at Heritage. Im not surprised it did well, but I was pleased to see it surpass expectations three times over. The entire auction was a success from start to finish.
Posters from horror films proved popular, as a rare one-sheet for 1939s sequel Son of Frankenstein, starring A-listers Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Basil Rathbone, sold for $43,020, and a one-sheet for Universals 1939 classic Draculas Daughter sold for $35,850. A one-sheet for The Mummys Hand brought $14,937.
Multiple bidders vied for rare paper from Hollywood classics, including one of just a handful of one-sheets known to exist from the 1930 film Morocco starring Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich. The bright stone lithographed copy which marked Dietrichs America movie debut sold for $40,630. A one-sheet for The Bell Boy, the 1918 film starring cinematic comedy giants Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, sparked a bidding war among ten people to blow past its $3,000 pre-auction estimate to sell for $35,850.
Unusual discoveries sparked intense bidder interest, as a scarce insert format poster for the iconic Casablanca sold for $33,460, and a set of three Italian premier display posters for 1966s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly measuring an amazing 39-by-110-inches sold for an astounding $31,070 against an $18,000 estimate. Famed poster artist Drew Struzans original acrylic painting for the one-sheet used for Cannonball Run II sold for $21,501. Also, the always popular one-sheet for This Gun for Hire realized $15,535.
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