Altered Film Classifications On Posters In Australia
Title # 1. Sergeant York ( 1941 ). Altered on daybill from Not Suitable For Children to For General Exhibition for unknown reason. 0
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Yes and will be next to show,
Top two daybill images from the original Australian first release in Australia in 1944.
Colour daybill just above ( left ) is from the 1949 Australian re-release.
Duotone daybill just above ( right ) is from a 1980's re-release.
Almost everything points to Casablanca having been originally classified Not Suitable For General Exhibition, then followed in 1949 as Not Suitable For Children and in the early 1980's as NRC.
I have checked countless newspaper advertisements over the years that Casablanca was screened in Australia and the vast majority concur with the ratings just mentioned. I only found one stating For General Exhibition placed by a small cinema and some without ratings which in that particular period of time, unless marked with a code were meant to be For General Exhibition films. Human error in not adding the Not Suitable For General Exhibition code a strong possibility I believe.
A question now to Bruce who has six of the original release daybills sold in past auctions. 5 of the daybills have the For General Exhibition snipe attached and the remaining one has no classification rating at all, My question to Bruce is did the 5 with stickers attached all come to you from the one seller ?
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Thanks for bringing Johnny O'clock ( 1947 ) to our attention.. Let's make it title # 4. No other example, as far as I know is available of any other censorship rating applying for this film on any other poster. I would think either an incorrect censorship rating or even perhaps a wrong spelling was originally printed on the poster by mistake and before the posters were sent out the mistake was officially corrected by the overprinted Suitable Only For Adults censorship rating.
Bitter Victory
Law of The Tropics
Hercules - though I suspect they just left the rating off the original printed poster
Plunder of the Sun
Thanks Ves for the four images, I will number them as follows -
Bitter Victory # 5
Law Of The Tropics # 6.
Hercules # 7.
Plunder Of The Sun # 8.
Comments on each one to follow.
I think someone playing around with ratings for something to do or perhaps a theatre owner altering the poster for a children's matinee. It would be interesting to see another image of another daybill, if actually one exists, to see if it has been altered or not.
Let's make Commando # 9. I will comment on this film in due course.
With this thread I had originally intended it for alterations to ratings that happened on the same poster. With Saturday Night Fever two different posters were printed with separate ratings applying to each poster and the different versions of the film.
Another interesting one. To the right of the legible small "Not Suitable For Children" is the ghost of a larger "Suitable Only For Adults" which has been almost completely printed over.
For instance in the case of San Demetrio London (1943), as you can see by the newspaper clipping (22 March 1944) the film was bloody re-rated once the bloody word was deleted which is why the bloody sticker would have been bloody applied.
I suspect any adverts for the film before the above date would show the old/original rating and after that date with the new rating - bear in mind news did not travel by email back then, so it may not have been immediate.
So I think there are probably any number of reasons for the daybill NOT having the new censorship rating, such as:
1. It was never added and the only logical reason it was never added (because a lesser rating would surely bring in more bums on seats) was the film had already had its season at the picture theatre from where the film had been shown.
2. It never made it to a picture theatre for display and was lining the floor of a house somewhere (improbable I know, but I hear it happens).
3. It was removed when it was placed on linen 60 or so years later prior to being sold at auction.
4. We will never know.
I don't believe the Tarzan Triumphs newspaper advertisement had anything to do with censorship in any form and was just a case of an error being made.
Tarzan Triumphs was released in the USA on 19th February 1943 and was followed by a release in Australia on the 23rd of December 1943. In the early 1940's Australian troops engaged enemy forces in combat in North Africa and the Mediterranean for the first time, so by the time Tarzan Triumphs was released in Australia many years had elapsed and atter long fighting the Nazis we were not one of the sympathetic countries. For the record I am in no way suggesting David meant to include Australia in the sympathetic countries as I know he didn't. All I am saying is to rule out this information as being a reason for a banning. If there had been an early banning, it would I feel have had to be because of violence but there is no record of any banning in any newspapers that I can see, and in that particular period of time this sort of information was relayed to the general public through newspapers. Apart from the one classified advertisement I found and displayed earlier with the ( A ) appearing on it and after searching again no other advertisements have I been able to locate with a not suitable for children rating applied throughout the release, so I believe this was just a mistake in human error with a incorrect rating being used in the advertisement.