IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1947 Robert Hamer Ealing Studios Drama IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, based on a novel by Arthur la Bern and starring Googie Withers, John McCallum, Edward Chapman, Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Sydney Tafler, Susan Shaw, Nigel Stock, Patricia Plunkett, Betty Ann Davies, Jane Hylton, David Liney, John Slater, Meier Tzelniker, John Carol, Alfie Bass, Frederick Piper, Michael Howard, Hermione Baddeley, John Salew, Gladys Henson, Edie Martin, Betty Baskcomb and Gilbert Davis. The film was produced by Michael Balcon with a script by Angus MacPhail, Robert Hamer & Henry Cornelius, cinematography by Douglas Slocombe and music by Ernest Irving.

Poster art by James Boswell. Born in Westport, New Zealand in 1906, Boswell was educated at the Elam School of Art in Auckland before moving to England in 1925 to study at the Royal College of Art. Although primarily a painter he temporarily gave this up in 1932 to work in graphics. At this time he joined the Communist Party and in 1933 founded the Artists International association, promoting left-wing and anti-militarist art. He attended James Fitton’s (Kind Hearts and Coronets) evening classes in lithography at the Central School and after the war became art director for Shell and art editor for the magazine Lilliput from 1947 to 1950. He is recognized as one of the outstanding draughtsmen of the 1930s and 1940s.

Stunning Ealing Studios working-class drama, set in the East End of London, in which escaped convict McCallum turns up on the doorstep of his now married mistress and demands to hide out. There’s a finely etched picture of 40s East End life, and the striving for a poetic dimension in the fatalist theme of doomed love in a drab urban setting.

Printed by Graphic Reproductions Ltd. (Ealing’s main printer through the 1940s and 1950s)

The poster is in very good folded condition with a 2 inch tear at the left edge, 2 inch and 1 inch tears at the right edge, slight creasing in both top corners and a crease in the bottom left corner.