SECRET AGENT

Original British 17 inch x 22 inch Trade Advertisement removed from The Cinema April 29th, 1936 for the 1936 Alfred Hitchcock Thriller SECRET AGENT, based on the story by W. Somerset Maugham and starring John Gielgud, Madeleine Carroll, Peter Lorre, Robert Young, Percy Marmont, Lilli Palmer, Florence Kahn, Charles Carson, Tom Helmore, Andreas Malandrinos, Howard Marion-Crawford, Rene Ray and Michael Redgrave.

Both sides of the advert are devoted to the film.

The scenario is an ambitious web of double identity and double meaning. Edgar Brodie (Gielgud) is a British novelist-turned-spy who travels to Switzerland during World War I under the name of Richard Ashenden. With him are a fictional wife, Elsa Carrington (Carroll), and an eccentric hired assassin known as “the General” (Peter Lorre). Their mission is to find and kill a German spy, but first they must guess who he is.

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 extremely rare.

The Advertisement is in very good condition with one vertical centre fold. On the reverse side there is surplus paper along the centre fold.