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Auction History Result 6h0162 GREAT DICTATOR 40x60 1940 Charlie Chaplin anti-war classic, before Pearl Harbor, ultra rare! Date Sold 4/14/2024 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original Vintage Theatrical Paperbacked Style A Forty by Sixty Movie Poster (40x60; measures 40" x 60" [102 x 152 cm]) (Learn More) The Great Dictator, the 1940 Charles Chaplin World War II (WWII) anti-war black comedy ("Charlie Chaplin in his greatest role"; "The world will be laughing again..."; "2 1/2 hours of hilarity! Twelve thousand feet of laughter chosen from half a million feet of film!"; "The Chaplin millions love! The little tramp is back, converging into a dual role of a power-mad tyrant!"; "Plus a New Chaplin! A Chaplin for the new generation of fans, aiming his mirth at a target of timeliness!"; "The comedy masterpiece!"; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; the movie was Chaplin's first actual talking movie, because his two previous only had music tracks and sound effects, but no dialogue, and this was a fully talking movie, so it was advertised with the tagline "He talks..."; note that this movie was made very early in World War II, and it had actually started production in 1937, long before the U.S. entered, and before the full extent of the Nazi atrocities were even guessed at, but it seems somewhat bizarre to have a movie that makes fun of such events, although the movie ends with a long brilliant speech in defense of pacifism by Chaplin!) starring Charlie Chaplin (Charles Chaplin; nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film; he played two parts, the Hitler-like Adenoid Hynkel, and "a Jewish barber", a twin for Hynkel), Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie (nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film; as the Mussolini-like Benzino Napaloni), Henry Daniell, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Gilbert (as Field Marshal Herring), Maurice Moscovitch, Emma Dunn, Bernard Gorcey, and Paul Weigel. Note that Adolf Hitler found nothing funny about this movie, and he had it banned in Germany! 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 40x60! That is not surprising, because 40x60s made from before 1946 are beyond rare (with the exception of a few exact titles; see below). The theaters were charged around $2 each for 40x60s at a time when three-sheets cost around 20 cents, so naturally, only the biggest theaters ordered them. And they were made on a heavy paper that was rolled, and most of the few that were ordered were almost surely destroyed after use. There are a handful of titles where someone once found a number of examples of the 40x60 from the early 1940s, but other than those, we have only sold a handful of 40x60s from movies from 1940 to 1945, and only two of those were from a significant release, and both were from 1943's "Spider Woman", the Sherlock Holmes movie, certainly not nearly as major a release as The Great Dictator. The chances of another example of this poster being discovered are infinitesimal! Note that this poster has been paperbacked. It was backed onto a very heavy paper backing, because its defects were such that it needed stabilization provided by a heavy backing. This means that because the poster was paperbacked onto a thick paper backing, it CAN'T possibly be sent rolled, and must be sent in a very large flat package that measures approximately 42" x 62" x 5" (because it will need extra boards on each side), so bear this expense in mind before bidding on this incredibly rare poster. What IS paperbacking? Learn More Overall Condition and Pre-Restoration Defects with Quality of Restoration: fair to good. Prior to paperbacking, the poster survived being near a fire, and the right 3" to 3 1/2" was burned off, and evenly spaced areas to the left of that were darkened considerably from the right edge to 14" into the poster (they were evenly spaced because the poster was rolled when this happened). Also, the bottom 13" of the poster was darkened all the way across, because this was the part on the outside when it was rolled. There were also stains in the upper left background and right background areas and horizontal creases and scuffs scattered throughout. PLEASE LOOK CLOSELY AT OUR "PRE-RESTORATION" IMAGE TO SEE EXACTLY WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE POSTER . It is very fortunate that very few of the defects are in the wonderful central image of Chaplin. A talented restorer did what they could to replace the missing right area and then repair the above defects, but they did not want to paint over large portions of the sides of the poster, so those defects (and some of the more significant horizontal creases) are still clearly noticeable. But most of this somewhat fades away when you look at the poster from a reasonable viewing distance, and, as we said above, the chances of finding a better example are incredibly close to zero, so one must accept this poster's defects if one hopes to ever own it! Please bear all of the above in mind and the added cost of shipping it in a very large flat package, and look at our super-sized image before bidding on this incredibly rare poster. Learn More about condition grades 
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