CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939) One sheet poster

[Los Angeles]: Warner Brothers, [1939]. Vintage original 41 x 27″ (105 x 69 cm) one sheet poster. Conserved on linen, there has been some expert retouching in a couple of blank areas on either side of the word “TRAPPED”. Near fine.

The first explicitly anti-Nazi film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, being released in May 1939, four months before the beginning of World War II and two-and-a-half years before the United States’ entry into the war. Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a political thriller film directed by Anatole Litvak for Warner Brothers.

The film stars Edward G. Robinson, Francis Lederer, George Sanders, Paul Lukas and a large cast of German actors, including some who had emigrated from their country after the rise of Adolf Hitler. Many of the German actors who appeared in the film changed their names for fear of reprisals against relatives still living in Germany. Harry, Albert and Jack Warner, who then owned Warner Brothers, were Jewish, and unlike the other studio heads (most of which were also Jewish) they were willing to risk the wrath of Germany (still a potent market for their films) and make this film.

The movie is based on a series of articles by FBI officer Leon G. Turrou, recounting his investigation of Nazi spy rings in the United States. Parts of the film are drawn from the Rumrich Nazi spy case, the first major international espionage case in American history. (Wikipedia)