SAPPHIRE

Original British 40 inch x 79 1/2 inch 3-Sheet Poster for the 1959 Basil Dearden Thriller SAPPHIRE, original screenplay by Janet Green and starring Nigel Patrick, Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, Paul Massie, Bernard Miles, Olga Lindo, Earl Cameron, Rupert Davies, Gordon Heath, Harry Baird, Orlando Martins, Yvonne Buckingham Robert Adams, Grace Arnold, Thomas Baptiste, Basil Dignam, Fenella Fielding, Dorothy Gordon, Desmond Llewelyn, John Richardson, Barbara Steele, Peter Vaughan and Richard Vernon.

In 1950s London racial hostility to Commonweath immigrants is openly paraded. A pregnant girl, initially assumed to be white, is murdered. As two detectives start to investigate, and discover her racial origins were much more mixed, public prejudices and those of the officers themselves are exposed..

Poster art by Arnaldo Putzu (1927 – 2012).

After studying art in Rome Arnaldo Putzu met poster artist Enrico de Seta in 1948 whilst doing illustration work in Milan. De Seta took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming post-war Italian film industry. In the early 1950s Putzu went freelance working for, among others, Augusto Favalli, a fine artist who had set up a commercial studio in 1946 employing several artists and collaborating with the production company Lux Film.

Around the same time John Davis of the Rank Organisation asked Eric Pulford, then creative head of Rank’s Downton Advertising, to produce some special brochures for their Italian office. Pulford flew out to Rome and worked alongside Augusto Favalli and his team of artists. When Favalli died in 1969 some of the artists, including Putzu, moved to London to work with Pulford, whose expanding company by then was producing poster art for several major film companies.

Poster printed by W.E. Berry, Ltd., Bradford

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