Hundreds of the most evocative film posters of all time, including a rare 1935 poster for Top Hat, Fred Astaire’s most successful film with his most famous partner Ginger Rogers, will be sold at auction in Los Angeles on Monday. The entire sale is estimated to fetch more than £500,000 – the Top Hat poster alone £30,000.
Other vintage posters include Gone With the Wind, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sunset Boulevard and Casablanca – the latter a classic by Bill Gold, who created the images that sold more than 1,000 movies over a 70-year career.
The selection goes right back to the earliest days of cinema, including posters and cinema lobby cards for DW Griffith’s epic 1915 silent movie The Birth of a Nation – which took up 12 reels for a running time of more than three hours – and the 1917 The Adventures of Buffalo Bill, which employed more than 5,000 extras for the battle scenes. The first American adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, directed in 1922 by Albert Parker and starring John Barrymore as the great detective, is also represented.
Three of the most famous postwar Italian poster artists also feature in the sale – Alfredo Capitani, who created the swooningly romantic image of Rita Hayworth as Gilda in 1946, Anselmo Ballester’s 1947 The Lady From Shanghai, and Luigi Martinati’s poster for Federico Fellini’s 1960 classic La Dolce Vita, each estimated at up to £20,000.
Other covetable movie memorabilia in the Bonhams and Turner Classic Movies sale include original artwork for the 1959 Oscar-nominated Imitation of Life and the first Star Wars film in 1977.
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