What Happened To The Australian Daybills?
On researching Australia daybills over a very long period of time something that stands out to me is the number of Australian daybills that images have not surfaced for. One can understand daybills printed up to 1949 being scare allowing for World War 11 paper shortages and other factors. I was once told by a person who had worked for a major film distributor that loads of unused Australian daybills, one sheets and other film paper were taken to the dump and disposed of reguarly.Personally about twenty five years ago I approached a second hand shop and was told by the owner she had only a few months before also dumped a lot of film posters as she thought they were of no commercial value.
I have been looking into Blake Films 1950 & 1960 releases and Regent Films 1960 releases in particular and am amazed at how small the number of daybill titles printed for them have surfaced to date. Some of the missing titles include Chimes At Midnight, The Umbrellas Of Cherboug, Jack The Ripper, Only The Valiant ( re-release ). I am wondering in being small independent companies their print runs were less than the majors knowing bookings would be a lot less that the major distributors would generally receive. It is often said a lot of posters are hoarded by collectors but in the case of Blake and Regent there titles are not extremely collectible due to lesser known titles with duotone and less attractive artwork.
Comments
I don't think you can expect images for everything to appear on the internet. I have hundreds of Australian posters that I have not photographed as yet, many of which might not have been seen before. They are very low on my priority list because they are either in poor condition or have little or no value and I just don't have the time. There are other collectors who have posters that might not have been seen but they have no reason to load images to the internet because they never sell anything.
Are you referring to the Blake films Jack the Ripper with Klaus Kinski? If so, I have two versions.
All valid and logical points, probably close to the mark on all of them, except the one about you having no time...
The most obscure daybill titles turn up on eBay & eMoviposter along with many dealers sites and often in multiple copies. I am wondering why at least one copy hasn't surfaced of mainly moderate titles that one would think people wouldn't collect and save and would want to sell off. I have also been privileged to view a few large collections in my day and I have never sighted a large amount of titles.
John's point is valid but there are so many Blake and Regent titles in question that I fear many may not still exist or ever surface.
Although ebay and emovieposter have had lots of posters listed there are plenty of others that have not appeared on those sites eg Bruce has never had daybills for Rope, Dial M for Murder, Lifeboat, Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur etc etc. There are also lots of Blake Films posters that I have in boxes that have not appeared anywhere (I don't think Bruce would want any of them!).
On the "Where are these daybills?" thread a few of us have come up with quite a few images for titles not seen before. There are probably a lot more rare Australian posters lurking in private collections.
Over the last few weeks I have been photographing posters from a collection I picked up in Victoria and I think a lot of the one sheets I have put up haven't been seen before.
Lets hope that more of the missing images surface.
Many of these Blake Films releases are for sexploitation films. It would be very difficult indeed to get a list of all the films that they distributed.
I don't require a list. I intentionally excluded the sexploitation films when asking my original question. The two companies released a lot of horror, foreign language films ( Blake mainly ),re-releases, exploitation, teen movies, science fiction, sword and sandal and other genres where no images appear to have been posted on any websites.
These are the films I have been solely talking about.
The sexploitation titles which I mentioned previously that I hadn't included would have been be minimal in the 1960s as this type of film only flourished after the R certificate was introduced in late 1971.
I will have to try and get a list together. The majority of the Blake Films posters I have are 1970s.
The Ape ( 1940 ) was released in Australia in 1941. Another extremely rare horror film to find an Australian daybill or any other Australian paper for and to date to my knowledge nothing has been found as yet. BEF would have been the distributor and W.E. Smith the likely printer.
Thanks for your support Sven. A couple more titles you should enjoy soon.
Bluebeard ( 1944 ) was released in Australia in 1946. A rare title to find any Australian posters on and to date I have never sited any. The film most likely was released in Australia by BEF and printed by W.E. Smith.
Interestingly the supporting film at the venue above and also at other venues was the well regarded Lewis Milestone war film A Walk In The Sun ( 1945 ), which had a much longer running time and was a much superior film. It makes one wonder why it had a first release on the bottom half of the program.?
MEET JOHN DOE Australian daybill movie poster '41 Gary Cooper
Date Sold 8/17/2004Sold For: $52.00
An Original Vintage Theatrical Folded Australian Daybill Movie Poster (measures approximately 13" x 30") (Learn More)
Meet John Doe, the classic 1941 Frank Capra political populist melodrama (about a female reporter who writes a fictional story, which she presents as fact, about a man who is planning to commit suicide in protest of the world's treatment of downtrodden people; when the column is a giant hit, she must find a man to portray the writer and hires ex-baseball player Gary Cooper; Capra filmed multiple endings to this movie, as no ending seemed "right") starring Gary Cooper(in the title role as John Doe), Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, and Sterling Holloway
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.
Important Added Info: Note that we have no idea when this daybill is from! However, based on the paper quality and the look of the daybill, we would guess it might be from the first Australian release after World War II (WWII).
Condition: good to very good. water stains at lower right as well as some discoloration throughout the poster; poster was oddly folded resulting in three horizontal folds instead of the usual two; top 3" folded back at one time; some creases, smudges, and scuffs throughout the poster (more so around the edges); tack holes in each corner of the poster