LANCER SPY

Original British 17 inch x 22 inch Trade Advertisement from Kinematograph Weekly October 28th 1937 for the 1937 Gregory Ratoff Spy Thriller LANCER SPY starring George Sanders, Dolores Del Rio, Peter Lorre, Joseph Schildkraut, Virginia Field, Sig Ruman and Lionel Atwill.

An Englishman impersonates an imprisoned German officer and “returns” to Germany to become a national hero. A female German spy is assigned to check him out but falls in love with him.

It was based on a story by Marthe McKenna, a Belgian woman who was a spy for England in World War One. She previously wrote “I Was a Spy”.

The Advertisement is in very good condition with 4 staple holes along the one vertical centre fold.

Trade advertisements are colourful posters aimed at cinema managers, which were either slipped in, or part of, the weekly film trade journals which were available to them by subscription but were not sold to the general public. The large size Trade advertisements are about the size of US half sheet posters and have a centre fold which is usually hard to discern when flat. Most were designed to be pulled out, and some were attached by staples. Most have the date in tiny letters in one of the top corners.
The publishers own copies from the 1930’s were destroyed by fire and water damage during the Blitz and Wartime paper drives decimated those held by cinemas making them quite rare.