Under the category of "sloppy seconds" or "sorry thirds," I've long resigned myself to just viewing the color image of the British Quad that's in Tony's book -- and on a BFI commemorative postcard I bought in 1998 (see below) -- that I've tucked into my Criterion DVD of "Brief Encounter." Not the same as looking at a photo of the real thing. The U.K. half-sheet for which I spent nearly a third of my life looking for -- before I gave up spending $$$$ and ££££ on vintage movie posters -- apparently has the same art and colors, but cropped a little tighter. One of these days when I learn how to contribute to You Tube -- I'll upload just the opening credit sequence to "Brief Encounter." It gives me the chills every time. The movie is cornball as all get out, but it's still lovely -- a classic example of "less being more," with a running time of just 86 minutes and a great musical score throughout. I can watch it repeatedly without complaint.
-----Original Message----- From: rdel...@msn.com To: davidmkusum...@hotmail.com; mopo-l@listserv.american.edu Subject: RE: [MOPO] My frustrations searching for old U.K. posters. Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:28:20 +0000 These posters are stunning! I have seen pictures of the THE THIRD MAN before, but never anything from BRIEF ENCOUNTER. How sad that you never found it...it would be a joy to own it, if only for a little while. Richard Del Belso -----Original Message----- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:53:41 +1000 From: p...@cinemarts.com Subject: Re: My frustrations searching for old U.K. posters. To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU I watched BRIEF ENCOUNTER again last week. What a wonderful film, that gets better as the years roll by. Australia was lucky (and is, in many respects) as it has always had as steady a diet of British films (and TV) as US product. It still does as far as TV is concerned and British films (from their erratic output) are also well-served when local distributors can afford to buy Australian/NZ rights for indie UK films. It's also why the Australian sense of humour is far closer to the British sense of humour. As my favourite high school English teacher used to say, "It's all about irony, matey." Like David, I'd like to hear what Adrian (for one) has to say, as thus far, most of what has been ventured is speculation. I'm often surprised that international poster dealers seem stuck on their own country of origin material as far as knowledge is concerned and don't seem to have absorbed (and retained) what 10-30 years experience must have brought them. Of course some of the most knowledgable dealers and collectors in UK material are not contributing members of MOPO or other forums. Phil -----Original Message----- Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:29:06 -0700 From: davidmkusum...@hotmail.com Subject: My frustrations searching for old U.K. posters. To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU ** I love all the discussions from Bruce, Patrick, Paul, Ed Poole, Rich, et. al. -- about the anomalies of British paper. But I'd also love to hear from people like Tony Nourmand and Adrian Cowdry. (My reasons below.) ** For 20 years I searched in vain for the first-issue, "country of origin" half-sheet to David Lean's "Brief Encounter." (No more.) During that time, I had more luck locating U.K. paper from "The Third Man" -- but zero luck with "Brief Encounter." I acquired a U.K. re-issue one-sheet from "The Third Man" -- even though first issue quads and one-sheets are, in my view, more spectacularly spooky than the U.S. one-sheets which advertise the inferior, hacked-up-by-Selznick film version that was renamed, "The 3rd Man." See images of the U.K. quad and the U.K. one-sheet below: ** But about 8 years ago, and more recently after our California wildfires in 2005 and 2007, I stopped my buying sprees -- and began selling off large portions of my poster collection (including my re-issue UK one-sheet to "The Third Man"). I never found the elusive first issue U.K. half-sheet to "Brief Encounter" -- and I sour-graped it by telling myself, "maybe it no longer exists -- or if it does, no one will sell it." ** Initially I thought my failure to find "Brief Encounter" was because the film is so beloved and collectors were keeping them in their private collections. (The title remains obscure among most US collectors.) But then, like a dummy struck by lightning, I finally remembered stories about paper shortages and recycling continuing in post-war Britain. "Encounter" was released in 1945, still a brutal year. My feeling today is NOT based in facts -- but after decades of collecting, my impression is that British movie posters from the 1940s-to the early 1950s remain very rare -- with rarer titles sometimes turning up in countries outside the U.K. ** The only "country of origin" anything from "Brief Encounter" that I own -- is a fine condition 1945 pressbook I got from a dealer in Paris. (How it got there, I have no idea.) It offers me the only proof that first issue posters were made for "Encounter." For your viewing pleasure or education -- the images below include the spectacular cover of the 16-page pressbook -- and a page which shows a 30x40 quad, a 20x60 door panel and two 22x28 half-sheets were available. I've seen sets of 8-front-of-house stills from 1945 offered for sale several times -- but I've always passed on them -- on a hunch that my pressbook is rarer than any still. Meanwhile, the only U.S. material from "Brief Encounter" that I own -- is a good to very good condition "best scene" NSS 46/489 press still from 1946 (image also below). ** I'd welcome the thoughts/insights of other dealers like Tony Nourmand and Adrian Cowdry -- because they've likely held or seen first issue paper from "Encounter" -- and/or can chime in with their own ideas about the elusiveness of pre-1960 U.K. posters in general -- and why some titles rightly command lots of £££ or $$$. (In my copy of Nourmand's book, "Film Posters of the 1940s," there's a magnificent, two-page color spread of the British quad to "Brief Encounter.") After scouring the British markets for years, I concluded that because the likes of Nourmand, Cowdry, Cutts, G. Edwards, Dacre, Sims, Colman, S. Moore, et. al., do not offer "Encounter" with regularity -- that they are rare -- and might no longer exist (or few copies are known to exist). We're not talking rarity on the level of "The Mummy" -- but maybe we are! (Despite "Brief Encounter" not being very popular among U.S. collectors.) ** The irony is I am no longer in the market for a first-issue U.K. half-sheet for "Encounter." But before I go to my grave, I'd love to know whether someone has ever seen it in person -- or has a color image of either version. Anyone who has viewed this early David Lean movie -- with its stark black and white photography, its train station, city and park exteriors, Noel Coward's flash-back narrative structure and its glorious Rachmaninoff score -- already know why it's beloved. In the BFI's list of the 100 greatest British films ever made -- "Brief Encounter" ranked #2 -- behind what else? Of course, Carol Reed's "The Third Man." -d. -----Original Message----- Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:05:07 -0400 From: speedys...@aol.com Paul Gerrard Subject: Re: Britsh Quad rarity! To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Likewise, look forward to seeing the titles. Some very interesting points from Patrick and Rich too. Wouldn't say there are "virtually no quads from before 1960 in collectors' hands", but they are rare compared to US numbers. As Rich said, 1940s posters from the UK, particularly wartime, are very scarce because of paper shortages and rationing which continued beyond the end of the war. Not to mention heavy bombing/destruction during the war. Wartime posters were often printed on the back of other old posters. The austerity that this engendered may well have persisted into the 1950s, as rationing (food) only completely disappeared in 1954. Paper drives were encouraged by the government, where people and businesses were encouraged to have paper collected for pulping and recycling (nothing is new!). It also strikes me that photos I've seen of smaller regional cinemas in the UK up to the 60s show very little in the way of studio-issued posters - more commonly Front Of House stills and hand-written posters. Perhaps someone can confirm that impression I have. Certainly even when I started going to the cinema in the late 60s, I seem to remember FOH stills more than posters - or perhaps the area I grew up in was too provincial! I worked in a film archive for a few years and know from some of the archived material that cinema owners were quite fond of cutting up trade ads to use for display from the 30s onwards - cheaper than real posters. Pre-war the standard UK sizes equated to the US 3-sheet and 6-sheet (although perversely they were called 6-sheets and 12-sheets), and were presumably mostly pasted up, yet another reason why very few survived. Having ploughed through quite a few UK and US pressbooks for the same titles from the 20s and 30s, it seems that vertical "quads" existed for some titles, but very often these were actually the US 1-sheet! Same is true for lobby cards. Before seeing examples of this, I had no idea that US materials were used in the UK in this way. As somewhat more of a guess, the UK is a comparatively small area, so I would imagine that posters could be passed from cinema to cinema a lot more easily along with the actual film prints. This would obviously mean more wear and tear, and less opportunity for cinema owners to hang onto them. I know that the film reels were passed around at quite a frequent rate, as they tended to be booked on a weekly basis, and new prints were very expensive to produce. This probably became less of an issue by the time economic boom of the 60s came along. Even in the 60s though, I've seen notes from desperate distributors pleading for quick return of promotional materials due to shortage. Paul www.movieposterstudio.com -----Original Message----- Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:21:21 -0500 From: e...@learnaboutmovieposters.com Subject: Re: Britsh Quad rarity! To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Hi Bruce, Let me offer this as a possible help The end of the war also brought new government regulations on paper usage. A maximum poster size was set at 1200 square inches which was the size of the quad. We have a British pressbook for the 1946 release of Wizard of Oz. As large as that film was, a choice was given in 2 posters at the maximum size, A 30x40 and a 20x60. Then 2 different smaller 22x28s and a set of 8 black and white stills and that is ALL that was issued for this film. And with that came a limitation on how many of each could be acquired. There are many smaller titles that it would SEEM that only stills were issued. I personally believe that it also has to do with them being an island. While all of Europe was devastated, several countries were known for their paper production and it was a necessary export item. As paper production came back online, it was a LOT easier to distribute trees and paper products by trucking to neighboring countries that were in need than it was to have to load ships and send them to England and unload them, so Britain was more on their own for re-establishing their paper production. And I believe items like toilet paper, educational and government papers and newspapers took precedent over the film industry advertising. But again, that is my own belief. ed e...@learnaboutmovieposters.com -----Original Message----- Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:09:41 +0100 From: david.cut...@ntlworld.com Subject: Re: Britsh Quad rarity! To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Dear Bruce, That is certainly a great sounding Collection that you have coming up for Auction and I will be keeping my eyes open for the listings. As collectors ourselves since the 1970’s and later turning the hobby into more of a business , I can certainly say that the choice titles from the 1950’s in the British Quad format are becoming almost impossible to find, especially the ultra collectables such as Bond, Monroe, Wayne, Hitchcock, Disney etc. Pre War titles are virtually extinct, and rarely surface, but one of the factors that affected the availability and eventual scarcity of many Poster collections that had previously been accumulated in uk Cinemas, was an Act during the 1970’s which prohibited the storage of flammable materials in Cinemas and other Public buildings, so many of those storage rooms got cleared out, and sadly many were trashed or even used to keep the boilers going during the winter months!!!. Also, unlike the USA, the habit of collecting the Ppsters as a hobby never really took off until the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. At the same time some of the major Printers, such as Lonsdale and Bartholomew (formerly Stafford and Co) which were based in Netherfield Nottingham and also W.E. Berry in Bradford went into liquidation and as far as my research can tell they never kept an archive of the Posters that they had printed, in the case of Lonsdale and Bartholomew they dumped many hundreds, possibly thousands of Posters in skips!! I would say though that as a collector, there are still quite a few seasoned collectors who have accumulated titles from the 1950’s and are sitting on them, an example being our John Wayne collection which has taken many years to build up. I did notice, over the past decade on ebay quite a few Vintage British Quad Posters being Auctioned in America, that mainly originated from the 20th Century Fox studio, and apparently these had been sent over to America in the 1970’s by a Film Historian-Leslie Halliwell I believe, to be eventually auctioned, and the condition of many of these was virtually perfect, many still being rolled and with no fading or defects. Our website www.filmcutts.com , which is still a work in progress gives more background on the British Quad format aswell as listings for sale under genres and decades. Hope that this helps, I am sure that there are many more Collectors, more knowledgable than me who can throw even more light on this fascinating subject. I will wait with great expectations for your upcoming Auctions. Best Wishes, Patrick Nottinghamshire, England -----Original Message----- From: MoPo List [mailto:mop...@listserv.american.edu] On Behalf Of Bruce Hershenson Sent: 22 April 2009 14:44 To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Subject: [MOPO] Britsh Quad rarity! I will be listing a single owner collection of British Quads, beginning the 28th, and the collection contains a lot of older quads, and I am struck by the fact that, in all my years in the hobby, I have seen just a tiny number of quads from before 1960 (and even most titles from the early 1960s seem to be many times more rare than their U.S. counterparts). This collection contains 23 from the 1940s, 228 from the 1950s, 120 from the 1960s, and 116 from the 1970s to present! I am hoping MoPo members (especially long time collectors/dealers, and even more so those from the U.K.) can weigh in on the following: 1) Am I correct in thinking that there are virtually no quads from before 1960 in collectors' hands? 2) In all my years, I have personally only ever seen a handful of pre-1960 quads before viewing this collection; has anyone here seen any substantial number of them? 3) If they are as rare as I have stated, WHY is that? I understand that pre-WWII paper from all European countries is super-scarce, but in all other European countries you can easily find just about every post WWII title. Why is the U.K. different from the other countries? Is it that they had far fewer cinemas? Any light anyone here can shed on this will be greatly appreciated! Bruce Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
