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Auction History Result 4c0001 WINGS 34x34 cloth tire cover 1928 Best Picture winner w/ Clara Bow, different & ultra rare! Date Sold 4/30/2020 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original 1928 (from the continuous first release; see below) Vintage Theatrical Tire Cover Movie Poster (measures 34" x 34" [86 x 86 cm]) (Learn More) Wings, the 1927 William A. Wellman silent/talking World War I (WWI) military airplane aviation romantic thriller melodrama ("To those young warriors of the sky whose wings are folded about them forever in this motion picture is reverently dedicated."; "Story by John Monk Saunders"; winner of the Best Picture Academy Award) starring Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen, Arlette Marchal, Gary Cooper (in one of his first major roles!), Jobyna Ralston, El Brendel, Richard Tucker, and Roscoe Karns. Note that Arlette Marchal was a French actress who had some success in American silent films. She was fourth billed when this movie was first released in 1927, but likely she had great trouble speaking English, because when the movie had dialogue added in 1929, she was no longer billed at all! Also note that Clara Bow was the most famous "flapper girl" of the mid to late 1920s (she became known as "The It Girl" after the character she played based on the popular novel by Elinor Glyn). She had a major role in Wings, and was Paramount's biggest star at that time. But she had a notorious private life and seemingly "settled down" when she married cowboy star Rex Bell in 1931 (she had two children and she retired from movies), but sadly in 1949 she went into a mental institution after a failed suicide attempt (she had had psychiatric issues for quite some time) and she was released but never returned to her family, and lived alone until her death in 1965. NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography. If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know. Important Added Info: Note that we have never before auctioned this tire cover! It is printed on a thin cloth material that is circular, which is unlike the only other tire cover we have auctioned, which was cardboard. We have auctioned a number of cloth banners from movies of this period, but this is not one of those, because the cloth banners measure around 36" x 120". This tire cover is 34" x 34", so unlike cloth banners, which can only be displayed in very large areas, THIS tire cover can be displayed anywhere, because it is a more manageable size! Like the large cloth banners, it has metal grommets inserted around the edges, so that it could be displayed by putting the grommets over nails or hooks. What is a "tire cover"? It was designed to be put over the spare tire that was prominently mounted on the back of 1920s cars (usually the theater owner would put it on the back of his car, so everyone would see it when he was driving around town). Tire covers are even more rare than cloth banners, and as noted above, we have only ever auctioned one of them. That one was cardboard and measured 30" across, and this one is 34", but this one was designed so that the blank borders were pulled around the edges of the tire and attached to the back, and the border is around 2" on each side, so the image is around 30", which covers the spare tire exactly after the borders were pulled back. This is an incredibly rare item, not just from Wings, but an actual cloth tire cover from a silent movie, and it deserves to be displayed in a museum! Note that this movie was in continuous release from 1927 when it premiered through 1929, and it had sound effects added in early 1929. There is also an oddity about the billing. In 1927, Gary Cooper was billed after Jobyna Ralston on the very first posters, but on the 1928 posters, he is now fourth billed, equal in size to Rogers and Arlen. Normally, that alone would let us know that this banner is from 1928 (from the first continuous release), but because it is designed with a blank area at the bottom (so that the person putting it on their spare tire could advertise a specific showing), and because the blank area on this has a theater name and play dates written in, we know for certain that it is from exactly the end of November 1928, because November 29 fell on a Thursday in 1928! Condition: fair to good. As noted above, this tire cover is printed on a thin cloth material, and it was created with metal grommets around the edges. It was stored folded and it has many creases and scuffs scattered throughout, with water stains scattered in parts of it (no doubt those stains were acquired when the car was being driven in 1928 with this over the spare tire!). A specific theater wrote its play dates in the bottom blank area, as was intended. In spite of the above defects, this poster could be displayed and enjoyed as it is, or certainly, an expert could perform restoration to it. Either way, the new owner of this poster will have an ultra rare and historically significant poster to display on their walls (and we hope it will be in a public place, where many people will get to see it)! Learn More about condition grades 
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