Page 29 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

steaming out at me, and this was
surrounded by cameo heads of an array
of familiar faces in attitudes of fear.
Surely this had to be worth five pence?
(The film was the1938 Hitchcock
thriller The Lady Vanishes.)
I have childhood memories of
hanging around local cinemas watching
a young fellow pasting up day-bills on
adjacent fences. I would plead with him
to let me salvage posters before he
pasted over them, but was usually
rebuffed. I was fascinated by the speed
with which he could slap on the glue
and then, with a flick of the wrist,
smooth the new day-bills on the
wooden-framed, sheet-metal board
covered with remnants of what seemed
like years of earlier programs.
Later, I would again try the charm
offensive at Point Lonsdale, when on
regular holidays with my great-aunt.
But the chap who pasted up the day- The Bill Poster and his admirer.
bills for the Point Lonsdale cinema on
the fence beside the sweet shop was
I didn’t know then how soon the As well as changes to the grade of
also immune to my requests. My heart
trashy old-style posters, with their paper and the style of artwork, printing
would ache longingly for my own
colourful and flamboyant artwork, techniques have changed too. You need
collection of these gaudy day-bills. It
would be superseded by the anaemic to go a long way back, probably at least
would be many years before I realized
look of photo-realism and glossy to around the 1910s, to find any posters
this ambition.
artwork, better quality paper though it prepared from artwork etched on
My teenage experience of the
might be. printing stones!
distinctive environment of a poster
There was something gutsy about In Britain and Australia the earliest
printery was at the Melbourne office of
the old-style bills printed on little better posters for movies (at least up until the
British Empire Films in Hoddle Street,
than lavatory paper! Today’s glossy mid-1910s) were usually printed by
near West Richmond Station. I
style is enclosed in glass-fronted letterpress. This limited the display
managed this entrée thanks to the late
display cases at the cinemas mainly to text and the posters
Gordon McClelland.
themselves, and for a top release put on resembled those used to promote music
I was program organiser for a group
‘sliding’ signs at major train stations. halls and vaudeville shows during the
which ran closed film shows at
Occasionally, outside some country-hall nineteenth century. You see these basic
Gordon’s Carlton Theatre (later the
cinema, day-bills can be seen displayed posters all over fences and hoardings in
Carlton Movie House). Gordon would
in the traditional way. archival photographs. It wasn’t until
send me over to BEF to pick up copies
around the First World War that more
of day-bills (and sometimes I’d be
pictorial advertising would infiltrate
allowed to get a One-Sheeter) to
into movie promotions.
promote our show.
I revelled in this task. The printing
office was down the back of a dingy
covered-in laneway, in a collection of
tin sheds attached to the main office
building. The distinctive smell of paper
and printing inks, mixed with the odour
of drains was unforgettable. Amidst old
printing machines, tempting piles of
posters were heaped all over the place.
I wondered how the crew of workers
who inhabited this draughty out-house
could ever find the posters that were
needed! Yet it all seemed to work. I
would reluctantly depart clutching
several daybills for my up-coming
show at the Carlton. Letterpress cinema posters in Bolton England; early 1900s. The 'Excursions' were
travelogues often filmed from the front of a train.

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