eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

The Phantom of the Opera, the classic 1925 Rupert Julian Universal silent Paris France opera house murder mystery horror thriller ("Carl Laemmle presents Gaston Leroux's magnificent story of Parisian gaiety and intrigue"; "Weird! Wild! Wonderful!"; from the novel by Gaston Leroux, which was published in a serialized format in 1909 and 1910) starring Lon Chaney Sr. (in the title role as Erik, The Phantom), Norman Kerry (as Vicomte Raoul de Chagny), Mary Philbin (as Christine Daae), Arthur Edmund Carewe (as Ledoux), Gibson Gowland (as Simon Buquet), Carla Laemmle (uncredited as one of the ballerinas), Alexander Bevani, and "5000 others". Note that this movie was remade in 1943 with Claude Rains as the Phantom and Susannah Foster as Christine. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a musical stage play version, which is perhaps the most successful stage play of all time, and is still running on Broadway! In 2004, Webber's musical was made into a movie, with Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. Also note that as they did with many of their major productions at this time, Universal created two completely different sets of lobby cards, with different designs and two title cards, so there are sixteen first release cards, two sets of eight.
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that we have only previously auctioned one example of this card, and that was in a complete set 27 years ago!

Note that Universal created two full lobby sets for this very major movie, each with eight cards. However, they wanted to preserve the surprise of how the Phantom looked, so he does not appear at all on most of the cards, and on the only ones where he does appear, his face has been covered over. This card has both an image of the Phantom leading Christine underground, and also an image of the people recoiling in horror from him, but as we said, his face is not revealed in either image! Also note that we have a scan of both the front and the back of this lobby card, which should greatly help you see what defects it has.

What IS gelbacking? Learn More