Suitable for Framing

A poster from a 1937 two-reeler starring the Three Stooges selling for $27,000? If that sounds a bit pricey, you’ll no doubt be surprised to learn that when the poster from the Stooges’ film “The Sitter Downers” goes on the auction block next Saturday at Sotheby’s, it may well sell for considerably more than that.

“The Sitter Downers” is a key item in the collection of 285 movie posters on view at Sotheby’s Sunday through next Saturday, when they all go up for grabs. Sotheby’s has held such auctions in New York every December since 1992, but this will be its first West Coast sale of movie posters, and it’s anybody’s guess what the market will do here.

“Movie posters have been collected for decades and there are dealers all over the country who specialize in them,” said Dana Hawkes, director of Sotheby’s Department of Collectibles, who organized the sale with the assistance of film historian Jose Ma. Carpio. “But when the auction houses got involved with movie posters, as they did 10 years ago, it became a very public matter and people who didn’t know the market existed began buying them, so prices went up considerably.”

Spanning seven decades of film history, Sotheby’s collection is drawn from the holdings of various parties who pay the auction house a fee to sell their posters (the buyer also pays Sotheby’s a commission of 15% on selling prices up to $50,000, after which it goes down to 10%). The most ever paid for a movie poster at auction was $112,500 for a “King Kong” poster, although Hawkes points out that far more has been paid for other posters on the private market.

“Horror posters are the most expensive and they sometimes sell for as much as $150,000. They’re very rare, partly because compared with westerns and musicals, there weren’t many horror films made in the ‘30s and ‘40s,” Hawkes said. “Plus, the graphics are always neat, so people want them.

“We have a ‘Frankenstein’ window card that’s never come up for auction before which I’ve estimated at $10,000-$15,000--we tend to estimate on the low end though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doubled the estimate.”

She said that a “King Kong” poster never before on the market is also expected to take off. “It’s absolutely huge, the colors are strong, and it shows Kong with a plane in his paw, and terrified people in the foreground running away from him. It’s quite spectacular, and we’ve estimated it at $60,000-$80,000--which makes it the most expensive piece in the collection.”

Of that mysteriously expensive poster from “The Sitter Downers,” Hawkes said, “There’s a network of collectors who only want Stooges stuff, and they bid against each other and have really made the Stooges’ market take off. These collectors are only interested in specific things, however, and the price doesn’t go up unless the piece is from prior to 1940.”

*

Film buffs might note that the Sotheby holdings are noticeably short on posters from silent films.

“Generally, silent films are too esoteric and people don’t know what they are,” Hawkes said. “If it’s a Charlie Chaplin poster obviously we’ll handle it, but for the most part, the collection begins with films from the ‘20s. Familiarity is a big factor in the value of these posters, as is the popularity of the movie itself. Posters from films like ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Casablanca’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ always sell well--and of course, Disney stuff is a collecting world unto itself.

“This is a quirky market though,” she added. “Prior to Audrey Hepburn’s death, ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ posters went for a few hundred dollars; since she died, everybody wants one and the price has tripled. Everybody also wants posters from films with Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, but those stars have to be on the poster for it to be valuable.”

Foreign posters don’t bring as much as American posters because “they’re in another language and it’s not always immediately obvious what the film is,” Hawkes said. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. A French poster for the 1962 film “Lolita” is estimated at almost twice the price of an American poster for the same film because the French poster is bigger and has better graphics.

Which brings us to the actual art of these artworks. “In purely visual terms the most beautiful posters are from the ‘30s when they were still using stone lithography,” Hawkes said. “Beginning in the ‘40s they began to use offset printing, which created a different look--and today, of course, movie posters mostly use photo imagery.

“As to who the artists were who created these pieces, they’re almost all unsigned. You’ll get the occasional Al Hirschfeld poster, and Norman Rockwell did a few, but most of them were designed by anonymous people who worked in marketing for the studios. And that’s still the case today.”

* The posters can be viewed free of charge Sunday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Sotheby’s, 9665 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Auction is next Saturday at 2 p.m. Information: (310)-274-0340.