A trip down memorabilia lane

For a glimpse of Hollywood history, head to ... Northridge?

Tucked away on the campus of Cal State Northridge is a trove of film posters on loan from the collection of producer, film industry executive and onetime poster designer Mike Kaplan.

The most recent addition to the collection is the only known copy of the one-sheet poster of “The Hatchet Man,” a 1932 William Wellman melodrama starring Edward G. Robinson as, improbably enough, a Chinatown Tong assassin who increasingly becomes an American-style gangster.

Robinson is among 45 major actors from the 1930s represented in “Hollywood Worldwide,” the open-ended exhibition at the Gallery of Film Poster Art and the adjoining Alan and Elaine Armer Theater (where the “Hatchet Man” poster is located). The collection was assembled by Kaplan, who created posters for “A Clockwork Orange” and “Welcome to L.A.” and was brought to CSUN by John Schultheiss, the university’s chairman of the department of cinema and television Arts. It opened to the public about two years ago and encompasses posters from nearly a dozen countries, focusing on designs from the 1920s to the 1950s.

It includes such classics as D.W. Griffith’s “Way Down East” and Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” as well as lesser-known films such as an early Humphrey Bogart picture, “You Can’t Get Away With Murder,” and “Fools for Scandal,” starring Carole Lombard.

*

-- Kevin Thomas

Mike Kaplan Collection, Gallery of Film Poster Art, Manzanita Hall, East Wing, Cal State Northridge. Main gallery hours: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For full tour arrangements, which include posters in the Armer Theater: (818) 677-3193. www.csun.edu/cinematheque/html/gallery.html