do ^ vintage posters
Movie Art Vintage movie posters add pop culture art to any home by Corbin Crable M ovie theater manager Brian Mossman gets the same questions from customers nearly every weekend. “Hey, may I have that movie poster?” “My daughter loved this movie. May I buy this movie poster for her?” The answer is always a solid “no,” says Mossman, vice president of the Fine Arts Group, which includes the Glenwood and Rio theaters. His career in the movie business began more than three decades ago, and since then he has amassed thousands of movie posters for his own personal collection. “I started collecting them so long ago,” Mossman says. “This can be an investment one day when I retire. It’s like ‘The Blob’ – your collection just keeps on growing and growing.” Return to sender It wasn’t always so. In the early days of film, movie theater posters were rented out to theaters, whose management mailed them back to the studios once the film’s run had ended. The concept of movie posters as art didn’t really exist, and thus posters were printed on cheap paper with little attention paid to their overall design or keeping them for posterity. The general fragility of movie posters from the 1920s to the 1940s, coupled with the general
conservation of paper during World War II, meant that very few posters from Hollywood’s Golden Age have survived to the present day. In fact, accord- ing to online retailer filmpos- ters.com, it is estimated that “fewer copies of movie posters exist from most films made during the period of 1930 through 1945.” This would include many beloved classics of the silver screen, including “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz,” both of which were released by Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer in 1939. The idea of movie posters as works of art emerged from a post-war America in the 1950s, and posters began to be more art- fully designed and printed on
Movie poster for “Auntie Mame” in the lobby of The Glenwood Arts Theatre.
36 VINTAGEKC SPRING 2017
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