UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS

Original British 40 inch x 81 inch 3-Sheet Poster for the 1959 Ralph Thomas Comedy UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS, based on the novel by Ronald Scott Thorn and starring Michael Craig, Anne Heywood, Mylène Demongeot, James Robertson Justice, Sidney James, Daniel Massey, Claudia Cardinale, Joan Hickson, Joan Sims, Joseph Tomelty, Reginald Beckwith, Cyril Chamberlain, Dilys Laye, Irene Handl, William Mervyn, Eric Pohlmann, Jean Cadell, Barbara Everest, Nicholas Parsons, Barbara Steele, Susan Hampshire, Oliver Reed, Shirley Anne Field and Sam Kydd.

On marrying the boss’s daughter, Richard takes his father-in-law’s advice to hire a live-in domestic. He soon finds good help is hard to come by. Run-ins follow with dipsomaniacs, bank robbers, a Welsh lass who takes one look at London and runs, and an Italian charmer who turns the place into a bawdy house. Then when Ingrid arrives from Sweden things actually start to get complicated.

Poster art by Renato Fratini (1932 – 1973). An Italian commercial artist who specialised in cinema posters. In Italy he worked in Augusto Favalli’s studio, a major producer of Italian posters. He then moved to London at the behest of Eric Pulford, who ran the Downton agency, which had accounts with Rank and several other film companies. There Fratini enjoyed a successful career throughout the 1960s.

Printed by W.E. Berry, Ltd., Bradford

The poster is in good folded condition with slight fold wear along the bottom horizontal fold of the top sheet and a Canadian censor stamp in the top right corner. The poster is in two separate sheets, the lower sheet is just the title.