Page 28 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

A Poster Speaks AThousand Words

By Roger Seccombe

The early movie promoters showed
a mindset similar to cavemen. They
understood the power of imagery writ
large to attract audiences to their
primitive cinema halls. Promoters of
ballet or opera would doubtless have
considered the headline- grabbing
advertisements for music halls,
vaudeville shows and the new marvel of
cinema to be crass, vulgar and
sensational!
Any vacant wall, fence or other
prominent display surface was fair
game for bill-posters, who blithely
ignored the small sign threatening ‘Post
No Bills’ or ‘Bill Posters Prosecuted.’
The proliferation of hoardings and
poster graffiti on almost anything
Advertising overload: the Imperial Playhouse (later Embassy cinema) in Bolton,
vertical suggests an era in which
England around World War I.
protection of the streetscape from
visual pollution was not really a
priority.
As with advertising in general, the
more prominent the site the more
demand for it. And from the 1920s
cinema was in a position to pay for the
best sites. The paste-up man with his
pot of glue, brushes and ladder and role
of bills became a familiar sight around
the suburbs.
Posters began to appear wherever
people congregated, and what better
place to splash the latest and greatest
than on a railway platform? In
Melbourne the main concourse at
Flinders Street Station and major Prime position: the intersection of Burnley Street and Swan Street, Melbourne c. 1927
stations like Richmond, South Yarra
and Spencer Street offered prime sites.
As cinema posters diversified they
acquired their own jargon - the Daybill
or One-Sheeter, the Three-Sheeter, up
to the multi-section display of the 24-
sheeter, laboriously pasted up strip-by-
strip.
Clearly, the assumption was that the
larger the hoarding the greater its
impact. British film historian Leslie
Halliwell, in his autobiography Seats In
All Parts, recalls childhood memories
of these huge boards dotted around his
hometown of Bolton in north England:
I was attracted from across the
width of Bradshawgate by the huge, red
pictorial poster which covered almost
the whole of one wall (of the Queens
cinema). In the centre was a train,
Ascot Vale platform c. 1932

28 2008 CINEMARECORD