SECRET PLACE

Original British 16 1/2 inch x 22 inch Lift Bill Poster for the 1957 Clive Donner Thriller THE SECRET PLACE, with a debut screenplay by Linette Perry and starring Belinda Lee, Ronald Lewis, Michael Brooke, Michael Gwynn, Geoffrey Keen, David McCallum, Wendy Craig, Lee Montague and Ian Hendry.

An adolescent boy is sucked into an amateur diamond heist through his love for the girl next door.

Debut 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.

The poster is in fine folded condition.