LAVENDER HILL MOB

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1951 Charles Crichton Classic Ealing Comedy THE LAVENDER HILL MOB, screenplay by T.E.B. Clarke and starring Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, Edie Martin, John Gregson, John Salew, Ronald Adam, Arthur Hambling, Gibb McLaughlin, Clive Morton, Sydney Tafle,r Marie Burke, Audrey Hepburn, William Fox, Michael Trubshawe, Ann Heffernan, Jacques Brunius, Eugene Deckers, Paul Demel, Andreas Malandrinos, Cyril Chamberlain, Tony Quinn, Moultrie Kelsall, Christopher Hewett, Meredith Edwards, Patrick Barr, David Davies and Robert Shaw.

Tibby Clarke won an Oscar for his screenplay and it was the 1951 British Film Academy’s Best Film. This classic comedy about a meek bank clerk who masterminds a bullion heist is one of the best in Ealing’s output.

Poster art by Ronald Searle (1920 – 2011). Ronald William Fordham Searle enlisted in the Royal Engineers at the outbreak of the Second World War, spending part of the time in Kirkcudbright, on the west coast of Scotland. Here he encountered evacuees from St. Trinnean’s, a progressive girls’ school situated in Edinburgh. This encounter resulted in his first cartoon for Lilliput in 1941 and developed into one of his most famous creations and although he changed the name from the Gaelic to St. Trinian’s, the school, and it’s headmistress, were the brunt of many jokes till the school’s closure in 1946.

Poster design by S John Woods. Although Woods designed several Ealing posters he is better known for commissioning other well known contemporary artists such as John Piper, Leslie Hurry, Edward Bawden, Mervyn Peake and Edward Ardizzone in the belief that British films deserved the best and that British audiences could appreciate the best.

The poster is in very good folded condition with 4 small pieces out at the edges and minor soiling.