As a tribute to Lon Chaney and also Carl Laemmle

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The movie posters are a nice theme for collection. They often let us go back to movies that are now impossible to retrieve or totally lost, and we dive into the ambience of another time.

Among them, the posters of horror or frightening movies form a category, I would say even a market, well apart, which is also not the same (curiously) as the posters of magic.

A poster of the movie Phantom of the Opera is for sale by Heritage on November 7-8 in Dallas. It is announced at 200 K$ in the press release and 150 K$ in the catalog (Lot 85729).

The press release tells us that Universal Studios had made a specialty of such movies by starring Lon Chaney, the actor who raised his own make-ups to the rank of works of art. Our lot is an original poster produced by Universal for this movie of 1925, and is the only one showing Lon Chaney in his look for the character of the ghost. He is under water, with a periscope. It is known in only four copies, and this one is in excellent condition. The image is very successful.

This film comes very early in the history of horror movies and can be considered as mythical. It launched a fashion that moviegoers continued to plebiscite for their relaxation during those difficult years preceding the second world war. The visionary movie producer who offered these successes to Universal was Carl Laemmle.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The press release was a little too optimistic! The poster was sold $ 155 K fees included.