Tis the season, so I thought I would share this holiday photo of Ann taken at her home in Van Nuys in December of 1933. Located on Woodman, the house is still there and is now a pre-school. Ann and Leslie Fenton lived on this property for about a year before buying a walnut ranch in Encino and building a house (the property where I got married in October).

Happy Holidays!!

This week in the collection spotlight are a couple of posters from Gangs of New York (1938 Republic Pictures).

After Ann Dvorak left Warner Bros in December of 1936, she began freelancing for various studios, including Republic Pictures. Known as a B-picture studio, Republic poster art sometimes reflected the lower budgets of its films. Initially, I was not crazy about the poster for the American release of the film because of the duo-tone coloring and the use of photos of the actors instead of artist renderings. After I started dating my comic-book-writing husband, I came to appreciate the gritty artwork on the left hand-side. As it turns out, the artwork makes the film look far more interesting than it actually is. Gangs of New York is noteworthy only because it’s one of Samuel Fuller’s early screenplays. The film, which has Charles Bickford playing duel roles as a gangster and a cop who are not related, but look identical (a plot device that irritates the hell out of me), makes me wonder why Ann was in such a hurry to leave Warner Bros.

While I have only recently come to appreciate the American artwork for Gangs of New York, the Belgian poster has always been one of my favorites. I love how striking the bright colors are and positioning of the Republic logo on the gun. Another reason this is one of my favorites is that it is printed on the back of a map. The film was released in America in May of 1938, but I am assuming its debut in Belgium was delayed. It’s possible that war-time paper shortages is the reason a map was used as a canvas for this one.

I once chose Belgium as a travel destination because I am partial to their posters and thought it would be wise to go to the source. That turned out to be a lame idea, as I did not find a single poster from any of Ann’s movies and bought this one on eBay. Beautiful country though.

I have been collecting Ann Dvorak memorabilia over 10 years and have managed to put most of the collection up on this website. I have my doubts that anyone has actually taken the time to look at the 700+ photos and 150+ lobby cards/posters, so I thought I would start highlighting some items from the collection.

First up is my favorite poster, a 3-sheet from Bright Lights (Warner Bros 1935), starring Joe E. Brown, directed by Busby Berkeley. By 1935, Warner Bros had gotten over their initial infatuation with Ann and seemed to be trying to get some kind of return on their $40,000 investment (what they paid Howard Hughes for her contract in 1932) without promoting her too much. She made 13 films for the studio in 1934-1935 and, for the most part, is not featured on the poster art for one-sheets, half-sheets and title cards . Bright Lights is no exception with Joe E. Brown getting all the advertising glory. While Ann is the main female lead in the movie she only shows up on two of the lobby cards.

The first time I saw this poster was in a press book from the Warner Bros archives at the University of Southern California (USC) . As it turns out, Ann was frequently featured on the larger paper (3-sheet, 6-sheet, 24-sheet) for the 1934/35 films, but these are much much harder to come by than the smaller format items (which are hard enough to find as it is). Therefore, when I first laid eyes on the stunning 3-sheet for Bright Lights, I was tempted to cry because I thought I would never find an actual copy.

When I was in grad school, I would frequently put off writing papers by surfing the Web for movie poster dealers. One glorious day about 3 1/2 years ago, while avoiding homework, I found a website for a dealer in Sweden who had a Bright Lights 3-sheet for sale…at a price I could kind of afford. The press book is in black and white, so when this baby arrived in the mail, I was stunned by its royal blue beauty. It’s not in the greatest condition and is glued onto craft paper, but it’s gorgeous and one day I will be able to linen-back and frame it, which I fear will end up costing much more than I paid for it.

To see the full size image of the poster and other items from Bright Lights click here.

Enjoy!