ARE YOU LOOKING TO BUY MOVIE POSTERS OR RELATED ITEMS? We are the world's leading auctioneer of movie posters and related items. You are currently on one of our non-auction pages. We hold 4,000 to 5,000 auctions every FOUR WEEKS. To learn more about our auctions, click here. To register to bid on our auctions, click here.

About eMoviePoster.com:

In the past 32 years, we have auctioned MORE movie paper for MORE money than ANY other auction company, period!

EVERY item we auction starts at $1, with NO reserve, and NO buyers premium, and EVERY item is honestly described, with an unenhanced super-sized image!

We charge consignors the lowest rates of ANY major auction, and we have held over 1,834,000 online auctions!

Go to our current auctions in our Auction Galleries, and you will quickly see why we are the most trusted auction site!

eMoviePoster.com was founded in 1999 as the first all-movie poster auction website. We have auctioned well over 1.8 MILLION posters (movie and NON-movie), lobby cards, stills and related items through our auctions since 1999, surely the most of any online auction!

eMoviePoster.com

eMoviePoster.com - The most trusted vintage original movie poster site & the only major online auction with no buyers premiums!

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More
Login or Register to see large images.
Auction History Result

8s072 JOE E. BROWN personality poster 1930s wacky portrait of the big mouth Warner Bros. star!

Date Sold 8/19/2018
Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price.


An Original Vintage Theatrical Paperbacked Personality Poster (measures 22" x 28" [56 x 71 cm]) (Learn More)

Joe E. Brown was a very popular actor in slapstick comedies from the 1920s to the 1960s. He made a very long series of highly successful comedies from the late 1920s through the late 1930s, and then resurfaced in 1959 with a very memorable role in "Some Like It Hot" and he had a memorable cameo role in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World". Prior to his film career, he worked in vaudeville, the circus, and even as a baseball player! He was asked to join the New York Yankees, but he declined in order to focus on his career in entertainment. Interestingly, he played a baseball player in 1933's "Elmer, the Great". Brown passed away in 1973 at the age of 80.
If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.
Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly. We at eMoviePoster.com were just consigned a very special collection of 99 of these "personality" posters, which we are auctioning in separate auctions. They were collected starting in the mid 1980s, and the collector who assembled this collection tried to "upgrade" condition whenever possible over the years, so many of them are in excellent condition (sometimes likely the best surviving example), and on the ones where they are in lesser condition, it is because the collector never could find one in better condition! Now he has consigned them to us, and they will find new owners. If they were kept together, they would surely make an incredible display for the walls of any place where lots of people gather, like a museum, a restaurant, or any similar place. Of course, it is more likely that these will find many, many separate new homes, but we hope that they end up publicly displayed wherever they end up!

Note that Warner Bros. became a major Hollywood studio after merging with First National and having massive success with "The Jazz Singer" in the late 1920s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood through the late 1940s. During this time, they had a great lineup of stars, and they created two sets of personality posters to promote their stars (one in the mid 1930s, and one in the late 1930s or very early 1940s, and there may have been others, but if so, we have not seen them). You can tell their two different sets apart in three ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). Also, the second set from Warner Bros. is on a "linen-like" paper (the same that they used for their lobby cards and some half-sheets and inserts in 1938 to 1941, which is why we know the second set dates from that time). Some of their major stars carried over from the first set to the second one, and in the second set, some stars were dropped and new stars were added. These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that the high quality paper stock these posters were printed on does not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). This is especially true of those from the second set printed on the linen-like paper, because, just as with the linen lobby cards, these posters aged quickly if they were not stored really well. Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE! Also note that this poster has been paperbacked. What is paperbacking? This means the poster was backed onto a paper backing (acid-free), that is similar in feel to that of the original poster (except somewhat heavier). It is a similar process to linenbacking, except that most collectors use linenbacking for one-sheets and paperbacking for half-sheets, inserts, window cards, and lobby cards.

What IS paperbacking? Learn More

Overall Condition and Pre-Restoration Defects with Quality of Restoration: fair. Prior to paperbacking, the poster had tears, stains, and areas of paper loss in the middle right, including in Brown's nose, upper lip, and cheek. It had other tears and paper loss scattered around the edges and in the top of his name. Overall, the poster was in poor to fair condition prior to paperbacking. Given the poster's major defects, the restorer did the best they could, but you can clearly see signs of the above defects and the restoration of the above defects.
Learn More about condition grades

Complete Buyer Protection - No time limit on our guarantees & NO buyer beware
Hershenson Help Hotline - Direct line to Bruce (our owner!) for urgent problems
Also, please read the following two pages of Consignor Reviews - Page 1, Page 2, and two pages of Customer Reviews of our company - Page 1, Page 2, which shows you in our customers' own words exactly what makes our company and our auctions so very different from all others!


LAMP Approved - Founding Sponsor since 2001 - eMoviePoster
Postal Mailing Address:
Bruce Hershenson, P.O. Box 874, West Plains, MO 65775. 
(For our UPS or FedEx address, click here)
phone: +1 417 256-9616     fax: +1 417 257-6948
E-mail: Contact Us
Hours of Operation:
Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM & 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (CDT)