WalterFilm.com’s second catalog (#43/201) contains 84 pages and encompasses ten categories that include The Saint Poster Collection , (33 posters (1982-2004) from one of New York City’s most notorious gay discos) and a Katharine Hepburn Archive of 230 vintage photos chronicling her 62-year motion picture career.
The catalog’s cover (above) is graced by a stunning Japanese poster of Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece of erotica “Belle De Jour” focusing on a collage of images of the film’s star, Catherine Deneuve.
Below are several catalog pages and description of its contents or CLICK HERE if you’d like to view the entire catalog as a Flip File.
Vintage African Americana (vintage original star photographs, posters, lobby cards, film scripts, newspaper articles, rare books and advertising or marketing collectibles) identified with all types of black celebrities is highly valued, as exampled by Walter Film’s own offerings that includes the following:
PINKY – a group of 14 8 x 10″ photographs from the 1949, Twentieth Century Fox Film starring Jeanne Crain with an Oscar nominated performance by Ethel Waters, directed by Elia Kazan;
Since the Stonewall Riot in June of 1969, there has been a growing interest in LGBTQ social history as is describe here in the Queer History Social Media Project of the Society of American Archivists.
The Queer History Social Media Project is an initiative aimed at bringing the skills and insights of professional archivists, librarians, historians, and other social scientists involved in the study of LGBTQ history to bear in the improvement and enrichment of Wikipedia articles on topics, individuals, and organizations related to the LGBTQ experience throughout history.
And so, in 2011 – forty-two years after Stonewall – Walter Reuben Inc. made its first sale to a major institutional library of relevant items of LGBTQ cultural history, which includes: vintage original star photographs, film and theater posters, lobby cards, film and play scripts, newspaper articles, rare books and advertising or marketing collectibles and LGBTQ memorabilia. The sales continued to be made to an ever growing number of institutions and now Walter Reuben Inc. is an essential resource for material related to LGBTQ Cultural History and Memorabilia.
To view the material we have on our website please click: WalterFilm LGBTQ
1930s movie posters proclaimed, week after week, what Hollywood had to offer to an eager world during the days of the great movie studios and the Great Depression. No better example of this is the above exquisite 1932 vintage original Belgian poster of Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express.
The Beginning
In the beginning, as the fledgling studios began to grow, and knowing that a portion of their potential audience was illiterate, they took their cue from vaudeville, fairs and the circus to create colorful artwork that depicted scenes from their movies in order to promote their films.
From the mid 1920s through the 1940’s, movie studios developed their own artwork styles for their posters, lobby cards and other marketing materials. They hired well-known artists and illustrators, such as Al Hirschfeld, John Held Jr., Hap Hadley, Ted Ireland, Louis Fancher, Clayton Knight and Armando Seguso, to create the illustrations and graphic designs.
The introduction of the color offset lithography printing technique in the 1920’s changed the artistic quality of posters, sharpening the image and, over time, shifting the emphasis from illustration to photography.
At the same time, Hollywood Portrait Photography evolved as a result of the work of six individuals that became the photographers of choice for “shooting the stars:” Albert Witzel, George Hurrell, Clarence Bull, Ruth Harriet Louise, Milton Greene and Cecil Beaton.
Hollywood Portrait Photography came into existence at the beginning of the 20th Century, following the relocation of the film industry from the east coast to Hollywood. These fledgling studios needed to create interest in their motion pictures by promoting the actors who stared in them. From 1910 – 1970, there were six individuals that became the photographers of choice for “shooting the stars,” and each, in their own way (as seen above in George Edward Hurrell’s stunning portrait of Marlene Dietrich), helped define the look of the Golden Age of Motion Pictures and the Hollywood star: Albert Witzel, George Hurrell, Clarence Bull, Ruth Harriet Louise, Milton Greene and Cecil Beaton.
As the New York Times reported on September 6, 1936,
The cinema’s glamour machine that takes waitresses, debutantes, actresses, school-girls and their masculine parallels and by adroit veneering makes of them the dream children of the silver screen… Its product thunders from newspaper and magazine pages, from billboards and theatre lobbies. Its prime purpose is to make the customer go to the ticket window and lay down money. It must give the appearance of genius to very ordinary people. It must conceal physical defects and give the illusion of beauty and personality should none exist. It must restore youth where age has made its rounds. It must give warmth to neutral or rigid features. It is in short, the still department.
