VALENCIA, CA — A trove of nine stone lithography Charlie Chaplin movie posters are headed to market at Propstore‘s two-day, 826-lot LA Posters September 2024 sale scheduled for Thursday, September 12 and Friday, September 13. The posters range from those advertising early one-reel shorts to Chaplin’s later written-and-directed feature films released through United Artists. The catalogs are now open for bidding at LiveAuctioneers.
Along with D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin was a founding member of United Artists, a talent-owned studio launched in 1919 to free prominent performers from the binding and often onerous contracts demanded by Hollywood studios. The founding members — all at the peaks of their respective careers — began releasing new productions through UA.
Chaplin’s previous stints with Mack Sennett and First National saw him tire of the one-reel short format. He began to write longer-form content, which would emerge as full-length motion pictures, many still dominated by his Tramp character.
The nine Chaplin posters in the sale include mid-period shorts and his later UA feature films. At the top of the heap is a B-version one-sheet for City Lights, the 1931 release widely regarded as one of Chaplin’s best. In it, the Tramp befriends a poor blind girl, works to get her the medical care she needs, and ultimately has her vision restored, only to find himself incarcerated due the film’s many mishaps. The ending, where the now-seeing girl recognizes the Tramp as the person who brought her vision back, is considered one of the most poignant in film history. The B-version of the City Lights poster depicts Chaplin’s Tramp in a boxing ring, a place he has no business being. Considered exceedingly scarce, the linen-backed poster is estimated at $40,000-$80,000.
Next up is a three-sheet poster for The Circus, a 1928 United Artists release featuring artwork by ‘Hap’ Hadley (1895-1976), a popular artist who specialized in caricatures of the famous. In 1926, he created the art for Buster Keaton’s legendary feature The General. As Propstore notes, The Circus is considered by many to be one of the most-loved Chaplin films, finished and released after a series of personal and professional setbacks. Chaplin would win a Special Academy Award for ‘writing, acting, directing and producing’ the film, which saw numerous production mishaps, including a fire at Chaplin Studios on La Brea at Sunset Boulevard (today the home of Jim Henson Studios). The film’s release and box office success cemented Chaplin’s status as one of the leading talents in Hollywood. The three-sheet has been restored and linen-backed, and is estimated at $30,000-$60,000.
Described as ‘one of the finest copies among the few that have survived,’ a linen-backed United Artists one-sheet for the 1936 release Modern Times serves as a colorful reminder of one of Chaplin’s final hits before moviegoer tastes began to swing towards releases such as Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz, both released in 1939. Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which portrayed the impact of mechanization on the average worker – recall the famous scene of Chaplin’s character being sucked into giant gear works. It was also the final American release to use silent-era title cards. The film’s themes would result in Chaplin being branded a communist by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, resulting in the actor leaving America and living the bulk of his life abroad. The finely-restored one-sheet is estimated at $20,000-$40,000.
