SHAKESPEARE WALLAH

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1965 James Ivory Drama SHAKESPEARE WALLAH, story and screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala & James Ivory and starring Felicity Kendall, Shashi Kapoor, Madhur Jaffrey, Laura Liddell, Geoffrey Kendal, Utpal Dutt, Jim Tytler, Parveen Paul, Prayagraj, Pincho Kapoor and Hamid Sayani.

The Merchant Ivory team established their style with this leisurely, gently ironic study of travelling players in India, based on the experiences of Felicity Kendall’s family.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it’s closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500. Most of these posters were printed at the prestigious Westminster Press and Ward & Foxlow.

The poster is in good unfolded (rolled) condition with wear at the bottom right corner, water staining along the bottom edge and 2 vertical crease lines.