DROLE DE DRAME

Original 1940s release British 20 inch x 30 inch Double Crown Poster for the 1937 Marcel Carne Comedy DROLE DE DRAME (DROLE DE DRAME OU L’ETRANGE AVENTURE DU DOCTEUR MOLYNEUX), based on the novel by J. Storer Clouston and adapted by Jacques Prévert and starring Louis Jouvet, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Francoise Rosay, Michel Simon and Jean-Louis Barrault.

In Victorian London, a Crime Novelist and his Wife fake their disappearance in order to hide from an uptight Anglican Bishop who is leading a campaign against the “evils” of crime fiction.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld a.k.a. Peter Pendrey (Pendrey’s name is in the bottom left corner of the artwork). Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980..

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it’s closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500.

The poster was printed by The Westminster Press, 411a Harrow Road, London W. 9

The poster was in very good folded condition and has been conservation paper-backed.