ORACLE

Original Polish 24 inch x 36 inch Poster for the 1952 C.M. Pennington-Richards Comedy THE ORACLE, based on the radio play “To Tell You the Truth” by Robert Barr and starring Robert Beatty, Virginia McKenna, Mervyn Johns and Gilbert Harding.

The film was produced by Colin Lesslie for the short-lived company Group 3 which was set up by The National Film Finance Corporation as an independent unit to finance low-budget films with untried directors with John Grierson as chairman.

The poster art is by Ronald Searle.

Ronald William Fordham Searle was born in 1920. He 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.

The poster is in very good folded condition with minor edge nicks.