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Auction History Result

2t002 WEST SIDE STORY linen pre-Awards Z 40x60 1961 Academy Award winning musical, Joseph Caroff art

Date Sold 12/12/2017
Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price.


An Original Vintage Linenbacked Style Z Forty by Sixty Poster (40x60; measures 40" x 60" [102 x 152 cm]) (Learn More)

West Side Story, the classic 1961 Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins (winners of the Best Director Academy Award for this film) New York City romantic dance musical ("The screen achieves one of the great entertainments in the history of motion pictures"; "'Best Picture' Winner of 10 Academy Awards 1961"; "Based upon the stage play produced by Robert E. Griffith and Harold S. Prince" winner of the Best Picture Academy Award; with a sentimental script by Ernest Lehman, which borrows heavily from "Romeo & Juliet"; based on a book by Arthur Laurents) starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno (winner of the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this film), and George Chakiris (winner of the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film). The wonderful music was by Leonard Bernstein and the equally wonderful lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim. Note that Natalie Wood's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (who had also dubbed The King and I and The Sound of Music), and Richard Beymer's singing was dubbed as well. Recordings exist of some of Natalie Wood's singing, and she absolutely would have been fine, but Hollywood demands perfection!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.
Artist: Joseph Caroff
Important Added Info: Note that the classic art for this classic movie poster has long and often been misidentified as being by Saul Bass, but it is actually by Joseph Caroff (actually, Saul Bass had nothing to do with the artwork for the first release, but Bob Peak did do some artwork, but it was completely different)! Also note that this poster is the first release one-sheet, which was from before the movie won the Best Picture Academy Award. After it won the Academy Awards, some of these posters had snipes added to the top left area, and other posters were printed that look the same, but have Academy Award information printed on them, and a 1962 copyright date. Also note that this poster was linenbacked and restored by the "Backing to the Future" company, which provided a 7 3/4" x 9 3/4" certificate stating that the restoration was performed by them in October of 2017. This is the first time we have seen a certificate like this, but we hope that many restorers will consider doing the same, because that lets the buyer know both which company did the restoration, and they can also ask them questions about the specific poster (and in this case, the poster is numbered, so that they know exactly which poster it was, in case they restored more than one example of it).

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Overall Condition and Pre-Restoration Defects with Quality of Restoration: good to very good. The poster had been folded and it had creases, scuffs, tiny paper loss, and surface paper loss on parts of many folds, with pinholes, tears, and small paper loss around the edges, and smudges and scuffs scattered in the background areas. Overall, the poster was in good condition prior to linenbacking. The poster was pretty well backed, but you can see signs of the above defects and the restoration of the above defects.
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