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About Meloy Bros Forty by Sixties

Note that many years ago a poster dealer discovered an amazing group of special 40" by 60" posters that were created by the "Meloy Bros. Inc" company of Shelbyville, Indiana in 1935 and 1936! This company created special 40" x 60" posters that were distributed to theaters in the Midwest, and are NOT like 40" x 60" posters that were created by the studios at that time.
      The posters from Meloy Bros. are made on a very thick heavyweight board stock. The company would acquire photographic images from the studios, and then they would have them blown up, and then they would have them laid out with artistic design elements added with newly created titles and credits, and then they would have them printed onto the 40" x 60" heavyweight boards (in many ways, they look similar to jumbo lobby cards of the period, except that the titles and credits were created by employees of Meloy Bros., and not be studios).
      In 1935 and 1936, Meloy Bros. supplied these posters to theaters throughout the Midwest. It is interesting to note that they mailed the posters (or sent them by bus or freight), and that the theaters returned them to Meloy Bros. after they used them. No one knows how many different posters Meloy Bros. made during those years, or how many examples of each poster were made, but it seems likely that there could not have been all that many, as they were likely quite expensive to make! It also seems likely that most of these would not have survived, given how bulky they are, and given that very few people saved any sort of movie posters in the 1930s.
      Very few of these posters have ever been sold. In 1996, an example of the Meloy Bros. 40" x 60" poster from "The Petrified Forest" sold at Christie's auction house for $8,050, and we auctioned another example of THAT poster, plus 15 other Meloy Bros. 40" by 60" posters on 2/28/08, and the example of The Petrified Forest we sold that day sold for $7,900, and the other 15 posters sold for prices ranging from $66 to $1,235. Over the 3 years since, we have auctioned almost all of the remaining posters from this amazing find, and the last few of them will be auctioned in the Spring of 2011, and then there will be no more of these offered for sale.
      PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE POSTERS NEED TO BE SENT IN EXTREMELY LARGE FLAT PACKAGES (approximately 42" x 62"). We have ordered special extra strong 42" x 62" boards that cost five dollars each, and we will be putting two of those boards on each side of the poster, so the boards alone will cost $20 in mailing one of these posters. In addition, the posters will need to be sent in the U.S. via UPS, and, because they are so large, the UPS shipping will be approximately $100 to send, MAKING A TOTAL OF $120 TO SEND THIS POSTER ANYWHERE IN THE U.S. PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER UNLESS YOU HAVE A U.S. ADDRESS WE CAN SEND IT TO (we know of no way to send it outside of the U.S. that would not cost several hundred dollars at least), AND UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE $120 COST OF SENDING IT IN THE U.S.
      It is unfortunate that it costs $120 to send this poster in the U.S., but it costs very little extra to send more than one of these posters at the same time. So know that if you purchase two or three or four of these Meloy Bros. 40" x 60" posters, it will cost around $120 to send all two or three or four of them, so the cost of sending each poster goes down substantially if you buy several of them.