IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Original British 40 inch x 81 inch 3-Sheet Poster for the 1952 Anthony Asquith Comedy THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, based on the play by Oscar Wilde and starring Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, Michael Denison, Edith Evans, Dorothy Tutin, Margaret Rutherford, Miles Malleson and Richard Wattis.

Asquith’s elegant adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s impeccable comedy, with a definitive cast. Redgrave and Denison have poise and chilly charm as wealthy bachelors Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff who pretend to be called Ernest to court Gwendolen and Cecily (Greenwood and Tutin). Evans’s performance as Lady Bracknell is priceless and Rutherford and Malleson are inspired as Miss Prism and Canon Chasuble.

Poster art by Eric Pulford (1915 – 2005). Having taken life classes at Leeds College of Art for 5 years Pulford was apprenticed as a commercial artist in 1931 to Gilchrist Bros a process house of 24 staff. Leslie Whitchurch, a partner in a Leicester based agency and also a part-time publicity manager for Rank, became aware of Pulford’s work and asked him to do some freelance work for him. Then in 1943 Rank invited Pulford to start a publicity department for them in London resulting in posters for “Henry V”, “Odd Man Out” and “Oliver Twist”. When the head of Downtons advertising agency, Charles Collins, died, Pulford was asked to take over. He became chairman and managing director but still spent most of his time designing posters. He retired in 1986. Pulford is responsible, either through his own artwork or design, for several hundred posters, some for classic films such as the ones already mentioned plus “Edge of the World”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “Genevieve”, “Reach for the Sky” and “A Night to Remember”. He is, without doubt, the most important force in British film poster design from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s.

Printed by W.E. Berry, Ltd., Bradford

The poster is in very good folded condition in 2 separate sheets with minor wear.