Movie Posters & Celebrity Head Shots
In the earliest days of the cinema, when movies were still silent, theater owners would - or wouldn't - advertise what was playing on their screens at their own discretion. The first time a poster was designed to promote a specific film was in 1895, for the short French comedy L'Arroseur Arrose. Sadly, we do not have their poster, but we have hundreds more, since it began a trend that continues to this day. There can be no denying that the movie poster is its own distinctive form of art. Professional artists have often been hired to create eye-catching and enticing posters to advertise movies that may have been nowhere near as engaging as the posters that advertised them. In fact, movie poster collections have a prestigious place in the art world today. There are rare and beautiful movie posters valued at over one million dollars each, and then there are others that are not considered to be worth the vale of the paper upon which they were printed.
The American Treasure Tour has a significant collection of movie posters on display throughout both the Music Room and the Toy Box. Perhaps none of ours retail for a million dollars, but we do have many charming pieces. They help to tell the story of the cinema, from its earliest days at the turn of the twentieth century to today. Not only are there numerous posters on display, but the walls of the Music Room are also covered in the head shots of actors whose stories span the history of film. From the silent era, we have photographs of long-forgotten icons of yesterday such as Florence Lawrence, Clara Bow, James Hall and Thomas Meighan. Then, from the Golden Age of Cinema, the greats displayed include Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Betty Grable. And we have the more modern celebrities, from Julia Roberts to Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise to Mel Gibson.
As you delve deeper into the collections of the American Treasure Tour, you can explore the lives and stories behind the celebrities and the movies in which they starred....
