Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 18

Burt Lancaster

Fame came to Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal's The Killers (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and The Crimson Pirate (1952), and the Western Vera Cruz (1954). The athletic and handsome Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist Elmer Gantry (1960). His best work through the next decades was often in European features like Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (1974), Novecento/1900 (1976), and Atlantic City (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination.


Vintage postcard. Photo: A.L. 'Whitey' Schafer.


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noireby Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1990, no. 6231. Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner in The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 338. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948).


Spanish postcard, no. 1218. Photo: Warner Bros.Burt Lancaster and Virginia Mayo in The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).


Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56551. Photo: Sam Shaw. Burt Lancaster on the Paris set of Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956).


Vintage postcard by GM. Photo: Paramount.

Acrobat, nude model, and singing waiter
Burton Stephen Lancaster was born in East Harlem in New York City in 1914. He was one of the five children of Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal clerk at Manhattan's General Post Office. All of his grandparents were immigrants from Northern Ireland. Burt was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. Lancaster was accepted into New York University with an athletic scholarship but subsequently dropped out.

At the age of 19, Lancaster met Nick Cravat, with whom he continued to work throughout his life. Together they learned to act in local theatre productions and circus arts at Union Settlement, one of the city's oldest settlement houses. They formed the acrobat duo 'Lang and Cravat' and joined the Kay Brothers circus. In 1939, an injury forced Lancaster to give up the profession, with great regret.

He supported himself by working as a nude artist model by day and a singing waiter by night. In 1942, he joined the US Army during WW II and performed with the Twenty-First Special Services Division, organized to follow the troops on the ground and provide USO entertainment to keep up morale. He served with General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in Italy from 1943 to 1945.

After the war, he made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown's wartime drama 'A Sound of Hunting', the source for the film Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952). Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis.

Lancaster's debut was the Film Noir The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946) opposite Ava Gardner . Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster's angular face and chiselled physique. It made him an instant Hollywood star at the age of 32.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 304. Photo: International Pictures Corporation.


British postcard in The People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P. 1038. Photo: Universal International.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 399. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 79. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1299. Photo: Hal Wallis / Paramount. Burt Lancaster in Come Back, Little Sheba (Daniel Mann, 1952).


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 858. Photo: Columbia-Film. Publicity still for From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-156. Photo: Sam Lévin.

His own production company
After his sensational debut, the tall, muscular Lancaster appeared in two more films the following year. He traded on his tough-guy image in Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947) and I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948). He reunited with Robert Siodmak for another excellent Film Noir, Criss Cross (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck 's cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) and Edward G. Robinson 's conscience-bound son in All My Sons (Irving Reis, 1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. Lancaster was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along.

Burt Lancaster impressed film audiences with his acrobatic prowess the Technicolor Swashbucklers The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950), and The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952). The films became his first major box-office successes. His friend from his circus years, Nick Cravat, played a key supporting role in both films. Lancaster played one of his best-remembered roles with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Iconic is the scene in which he and Kerr make love on a Hawaiian beach amid the crashing waves.

In 1953, Lancaster started going in new directions, he later told film critic Roger Ebert: “That was when I went from From Here to Eternity to Come Back, Little Sheba. I always tried to do things that would expand me as an actor. You find out people don’t want you to do that. ‘Make another “Vera Cruz”,’ they say. ‘Make another picture like ‘Trapeze.’ Don’t do ‘The Leopard,’ for God’s sake’!” He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Lancaster won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe Award, and the New York Film Critics Award for his performance playing the corrupt evangelist in Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960).

Burt Lancaster set up his own production company with Harold Hecht and James Hill, to direct his career. Their production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as the Oscar winner Marty (Paddy Chayefsky, 1955), Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957), and Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958). Lancaster realised a long-held dream and directed his own film, The Kentuckian (1955). Reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director's chair for another two decades. In 1965, United Artists made a settlement with Lancaster to end its association with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, which had financially floundered in the late 1950s due to a few flops and exorbitant spending and wound up operations in 1959.

His films often reflected his liberal political beliefs. In 1947 he signed a letter deploring the anti-communist witch hunts in Hollywood, and he was nearly blacklisted due to his political beliefs. The FBI kept a file detailing his activities. In 1963, he was one of the Hollywood stars, who participated in Martin Luther King's March on Washington. Later, Lancaster appeared prominently on President Richard Nixon's 'List of Enemies' due to his support for Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. In 1985, Lancaster joined the fight against AIDS after his close friend, Rock Hudson , contracted the disease. He campaigned for Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3045.


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel Filmpostkarten-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. W 1552. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for South Sea Woman (Arthur Lubin, 1953).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf. Photo: Warner Bros. Burt Lancaster in His Majesty O'Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Spanish postcard by H. Burt Lancaster and Joan Rice in His Majesty O'Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954). On the flipside is written that the actress is Ronda Fleming (sic).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 39. Photo: MGM. Gary Cooper , Sara Montiel , Denise Darcel and Burt Lancaster in Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 828. Photo: Warner Bros.


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. C.D. 10.

Heart attack
During the latter part of his career, Burt Lancaster left adventure and acrobatic films behind and portrayed more distinguished characters. This period brought him to work on several European productions. Italian director Luchino Visconti wanted to cast Laurence Olivier in the title role of the Italian prince in Il gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale , but his producer overruled him. The producer insisted on a box office star to justify the lavish production's high budget and essentially forced Visconti to accept Lancaster. Lancaster delivered one of the strongest performances of his career, and the film was a huge success in Europe. Visconti directed him again in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) with Silvana Mangano and Helmut Berger. In this film, Lancaster plays a reclusive professor who is brought face to face with his latent homosexuality.

Lancaster sought demanding roles, and if he liked a part or a director, he was prepared to work for much lower pay than he might have earned elsewhere. He even helped to finance movies whose artistic value he believed in. He also mentored directors such as Sydney Pollack and John Frankenheimer and appeared in several television films. He also appeared in European features like Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976) as Robert De Niro's autocratic grandfather, and as an ageing gangster in Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980), which earned him an Oscar nomination.

He tried to raise financing for four years for Hector Babenco's film Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), based on the novel by Manuel Puig, after Babenco gave him the novel in 1981 at the NY Film Critics Society Ceremony. Lancaster was to have played the role of Molina, the gay hairdresser who shares a cell with Valentin, a political prisoner. However, Lancaster had heart attacks in 1981 and 1983, and subsequently a quadruple-bypass operation, and at the age of 70, he was essentially uninsurable. The film was later made with William Hurt, who won the Best Actor Oscar as Molina.

In the 1980s Burt Lancaster appeared as a supporting player in several films, such as an American general in the Italian war drama La pelle/The Skin (Liliana Cavani, 1981), an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe's wry comedy Local Hero (1983). Lancaster's last feature film was Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989) with Kevin Costner .

His acting career ended after he suffered a stroke in 1990 which left him partly paralysed and largely unable to speak. At 80, Burt Lancaster died in his Century City apartment in Los Angeles in 1994, the very same year as his long-time friend and circus partner Nick Cravat. Lancaster was married three times. He was married to acrobat June Ernst from 1935 to 1946, and to Norma Anderson from 1946 to 1969. His third marriage, to Susan Martin, was from September 1990 until he died in 1994. He and his second wife Norma had five children: James Stephen 'Jimmy' (1946), William 'Billy' (1947), Susan Elizabeth (1949), Joanna Mari (1951), and Sighle (1954).


French postcard by Editions Paris-Musées. Collection: Dominique Lebrun. Corinne Calvet and Burt Lancaster in Rope of Sand (William Dieterle, 1949). Sent by mail in 2009.


Yugoslavian postcard by IOM, Beograd. Photo: Sedmo Silo. Deborah Kerr  and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1995, no. 6478. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, G.m.b.H., Minden-Westf., no. 2180. Photo: Production Hecht-Lancaster. Burt Lancaster, Gina Lollobrigida and Tony Curtis in Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956).


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 957. Photo: Columbia C.E.I.A.D.


American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. F 232. Photo: Phil Stern. Burt Lancaster in Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958).


Czech collector card by Pressfoto, Praha, no. S 37.8. Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer, 1962).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 198, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon , Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage card. Burt Lancaster in The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 523. Burt Lancaster in Ulzana's Raid (Robert Aldrich, 1972).


Vintage photo.

Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Richard Harland Smith (TCM - Page now defunct), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie - Page now defunct), (IMDb), Wikipedia, and .

Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov (1921-2004) was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist, and raconteur. He played Batiatus in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and had also roles in films like Quo vadis? (1951), Topkapi (1964) and Death on the Nile (1978). Ustinov wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and staged operas such as 'The Magic Flute' and 'Don Giovanni'. The Brit became also a Swiss citizen in 1961.


German postcard by L.M. Kartenvertrieb, no. L.M.P. 01915. Photo: Wilhelm W. Reinke.


American still by MGM. Peter Ustinov as Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), shot at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, and based on the novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz.


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle, Mâcon, no. 004/8. Photo: Collection B. Courtel / D.R. Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov on the set of Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960). Caption: Contrast of eras between the clothing of Laurence Olivier and that of the director and actor Peter Ustinov.

Emigrated from Russia in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution
Peter Ustinov was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow in 1921 in Swiss Cottage, London. He was the son of Nadezhda Leontievna (née Benois) and Jona Freiherr von Ustinow. His father was of one-quarter Polish Jewish, one-half Russian, one-eighth Ethiopian, and one-eighth German descent, while his mother was of one-half Russian, one-quarter Italian, one-eighth French, and one-eighth German ancestry. Ustinov had ancestral connections to Russian nobility as well as to the Ethiopian Royal Family.

His father, also known as "Klop Ustinov", was a pilot in the German Air Force during World War I. In 1919, Jona Freiherr von Ustinow joined his mother and sister in St Petersburg, Russia, where he met his future wife, artist Nadia Benois, who worked for the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet and Opera House in St Petersburg. In 1920, in a modest and discreet ceremony at a Russian-German church in St Petersburg, Ustinov's father married Nadia.

In February 1921, when she was seven months pregnant with Peter, the couple emigrated from Russia in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution. Young Peter was brought up in a multilingual family. He was fluent in Russian, French, Italian and German, as well as English. He attended Westminster College (1934-1937), took the drama and acting class under Michel St Denis at the London Theatre Studio (1937-1939), and made his stage debut in 1938 at the Stage Theatre Club in Surrey.

He wrote his first play at the age of 19. In 1939, he made his London stage debut in a revue sketch, then had regular performances with the Aylesbury Repertory Company. The following year, he made his film debut in Hullo, Fame! (Andrew Buchanan, 1940) starring Jean Kent. From 1942 to 1946, Ustinov served with the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment. As a private, he was 'batman' (a personal servant) for lieutenant-colonel David Niven , and the two became lifelong friends.

Peter Ustinov spent most of his service working with the Army Cinema Unit, where he was involved in making recruitment films, wrote plays and appeared in three films as an actor, including a small role as a priest in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1942). He also co-wrote and acted in The Way Ahead / The Immortal Battalion (Carol Reed, 1944), starring David Niven and Stanley Holloway .


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 890. Photo: Pilgrim Pictures. Publicity still for Private Angelo (Michael Anderson, Peter Ustinov, 1949).


French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 117. Photo: Snark International. Aldo Ray, Leo G. Carroll, Humphrey Bogart , and Peter Ustinov in We're No Angels (Michael Curtiz, 1955).

An autocratic, mentally ill and megalomaniac emperor
From the 1950s on, Peter Ustinov had a stellar film career as an actor, director, and writer. Producer Sam Zimbalist initially thought that the 30-year-old actor was too young to play Roman emperor Nero in the epic Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, Anthony Mann, 1951), based on Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel. After a whole year of hesitation, Zimbalist received a telegraphic message from Ustinov that he would soon be too old for the role if they waited any longer, as Nero himself had already died at the age of 31.

Ustinov was then finally hired. His portrayal of the autocratic, mentally ill and megalomaniac emperor was honoured with a Golden Globe and nominated for an Oscar. Another screen acting gem is his role as the polyglot stable master in Max Ophüls's masterpiece Lola Montès (1955), starring Martine Carol. His other films include Beau Brummell (Curtis Bernhardt, 1954) and We Are No Angels (Michael Curtiz, 1955) with Humphrey Bogart .

In 1957, he played the leading role of Soviet secret agent Michel Kaminsky in Henri-Georges Clouzot's political thriller Spies at Work. He also wrote and directed theatre plays, in which he also acted. In 1958 he received two Tony Award nominations, for Best Actor (Dramatic) and Best Play Author, for 'Romanoff and Juliet', which parodied the East-West conflict. Ustinov later adapted the play for a 1961 film. In the late 1950s, he also made a comedy record, 'Mock Mozart' and 'Phoney Folk Lor'". He had been performing these as party pieces. Overdubbing allowed Ustinov to sing multiple parts. His producer was George Martin, the future producer of The Beatles .

During the 1960s, Ustinov was awarded two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, one for his portrayal of Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) and one for his role as Arthur Simon Simpson in the Heist film Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964) opposite Melina Mercouri. He received two more Oscar nominations as an actor and writer. In January 1963, the Mirisch Company sued him for damages after he pulled out at the 11th hour to play Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963), which was in production in Rome with his replacement, Peter Sellers . He acted in such films as The Comedians (Peter Glenville, 1967) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton , based on the novel by Graham Greene, and the comedy Hot Millions (Eric Till, 1968) with Maggie Smith, for which he was again nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which he co-wrote with author Ira Wallach.

He also wrote and directed the brilliant Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov, 1962) in which he played the role of the captain himself opposite Terence Stamp. It was followed by Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Sophia Loren and David Niven . During the 1960s, with the encouragement of Sir Georg Solti, Ustinov directed several operas, including Puccini's 'Gianni Schicchi', Ravel's 'L'heure espagnole', Schoenberg's 'Erwartung', and Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'. In the following decade, he acted in films like Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976) starring Michael York . He played an old man surviving a totalitarian future. He was also the voice of Prince John in Disney's animated film Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973). He appeared in television plays and shows and won three Emmys: in 1958 for Omnibus: The Life of Samuel Johnson, in 1967 for Barefoot in Athens and in 1970 for A Storm in Summer.


Romanian collectors card. Photo: Kirk Douglas and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960).


British postcard in the Cinema series. French affiche for Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960).

Hercule Poirot
Peter Ustinov's career slowed down a bit in the 1970s, but he made a comeback as Hercule Poirot in the star-studded Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978), based on Agatha Christie's novel. In the 1980s, Ustinov recreated Poirot in several subsequent television movies and theatrical films, including Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982) and Appointment with Death (Michael Winner, 1988). Ustinov's performance, increasingly based on his own persona, enjoyed great popularity.

He also wrote and directed the British-Yugoslav drama Memed My Hawk (Peter Ustinov, 1984) with Herbert Lom . It is an adaptation of the 1955 Turkish novel 'Memed, My Hawk', the debut novel of Yaşar Kemal, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Memed, My Hawk was produced in Yugoslavia following the Turkish government's refusal of permission to film. Ustinov's cinema work in the 1990s includes his superb performance as Professor Gus Nikolais in the film drama Lorenzo's Oil (George Miller, 1992) opposite Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon. This character was partially inspired by Hugo Wolfgang Moser, a research scientist who had been director of the Neurogenetics Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.

Ustinov's expertise in dialectic and physical comedy made him a regular guest on talk shows. His witty and multidimensional humour was legendary, and he later published a collection of his jokes and quotations summarizing his wide popularity as a raconteur. He was also an internationally acclaimed TV journalist. In 1984, he unwittingly witnessed the assassination of India's prime minister Indira Gandhi. She was to be interviewed by Ustinov for his three-part BBC series Ustinov's People, but on the way she was murdered by her two bodyguards. Ustinov covered over 100,000 miles and visited more than 30 Russian cities during the making of his well-received BBC television series Russia (1986).

In his autobiographies, 'Dear Me' (1977) and 'My Russia' (1996), Ustinov revealed his observations on his life, career, and his multicultural and multi-ethnic background. He wrote and directed numerous stage plays, successfully presenting them in several countries. His drama, 'Photo Finish', was staged in New York, London and St. Petersburg, Russia, where Ustinov also directed the acclaimed production. The cosmopolitan multi-talent was a UNICEF Special Ambassador from 1968, Chairman of the World Federalist Movement from 1990 and founder of the Peter Ustinov Foundation for the Improvement of Living Conditions for Children and Young People in 1999. Ustinov served as Rector of Dundee University for six years. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Royal Society of Arts in 1957 and was knighted in 1990.

From 1971 until he died in 2004, Peter Ustinov's permanent residence was a château in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He died of heart failure in 2004, in a clinic in Genolier, also in Vaud. His funeral service was held at Geneva's historic Cathedral of St. Pierre, and he was laid to rest in the village cemetery of Bursins. Ustinov's first wife was Angela Lansbury 's half-sister, Isolde Denham. They were married from 1940 to 1950 when the union ended in divorce. Ustinov and Denham had one child together, Tamara Ustinov. Ustinov and his second wife, Canadian actress Suzanne Cloutier, had three children: two daughters (Andrea and Pavla Ustinov) and a son, Igor Ustinov. His third wife was French journalist Hélène du Lau d'Allemans, to whom he was married from 1972 until his death. Steve Shelokhonov at IMDb : "His epitaph may be gleaned from his comment, 'I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World'."


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Ustinov in The Comedians (Peter Glenville, 1967).


French postcard in the series Le Monde merveilleux de Walt Disney by Editions Kroma, Caissargues, no. 233. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Publicity still for Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973).


British postcard by Gerimp Corp. Int.-Collection, no. PN 98.

Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and .

Films selectos

Spain in the era before the dictatorship of General Franco is an interesting goldmine for film memorabilia. We love this beautiful collection of leaflets from the early 1930s, published as an appendix by the weekly Films Selectos. We love the selection of photographs and the subtle colouring of this series. We're not sure about the numbering, while (a) former owner/owners wrote these numbers and sometimes dates with a pencil at the backside. Here's our selection of the Suplemento Artistico leaflets by Films selectos.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 5. Edith Jéhanne as the princess Tarakanova in Tarakanova (Raymond Bernard, 1930).

Édith Jéhanne played the lead in two major films. First in G.W. Pabst's Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney, based on a story by Ilya Ehrenberg. Secondly, Jehanne played the lead, together with Pierre Blanchar, in Le joueur d'échecs (Raymond Bernard, 1927).


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 9. Photo: First National. The Battle of Trafalgar in The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd, 1929).

The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd, 1929) was an American historical drama in which Corinne Griffith starred as Lady Emma Hamilton and Hungarian-Austrian matinee idol Victor Varconi played her lover, Admiral Horatio Nelson. For her performance, Griffith was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress. The Divine Lady was a Vitaphone sound film with a synchronised musical score, sound effects, and some singing, but no spoken dialogue.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 37, 14.11.1931. Photo: United Artists. Conrad Nagel and Norma Talmadge in Dubarry, Woman of Passion (Sam Taylor, 1930).

Norma Talmadge (1894-1957) was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen. American actor Conrad Nagel (1897-1970) was a tall, blue-eyed matinee idol of the 1920s. He successfully made the transition to sound film.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 49, 19.9.1931. Photo: Paramount.

Juliette Compton aka Julie Compton (1800-1989) was an American screen actress, known for Nell Gwyn (1926), The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1928), and Berkeley Square (1933). In the early 1930s, she was a regular at Paramount, often cast as 'the other woman'.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 58, 21.11.1931. Lilian Harvey in Princesse, à vos ordres (Hanns Schwarz, Max de Vaucorbeil, 1931) was the French version of the early German sound film Ihre Hoheit befiehlt. Co-writer of this film was Billy Wilder. It was remade in Hollywood in 1933 as Adorable, with Henry Garat and Janet Gaynor.

British-born, German actress and singer Lilian Harvey (1906-1968) was Ufa's biggest star of the 1930s. With Willy Fritsch, she formed the 'Dream Team of the European Cinema'. Their best film was the immensely popular film Operetta Der Kongress tanzt/The Congress Dances (Erik Charell, 1931).


Spanish leaflets by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 69, 6.2.1932. Photo: RKO Pathé.

Dorothy Granger (1911-1995) was a Texas beauty contest winner at the age of thirteen, From one short comedy to another, she worked with every popular comic or comedy team of the twenties and thirties, as a young foil with Laurel & Hardy, a damsel-in-distress for The Three Stooges, and a prop for Lucille Ball to pop in Perfectly Mismated (1934).


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 72, 27.2.1932. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Dorothy Jordan , Catherine Moylan and Dorothy McNulty a.k.a. Penny Singleton. Moylan's name is misspelled here as Maylan. The three actresses played together in the MGM film Love in the Rough (Charles Reisner, 1930).

Dorothy Jordan (1906-1988) was an American film actress, who emerged as an actress at the start of the talkies. Catherine Moylan (1904-1969) was an American actress of Belgian origin and the first Miss Universe in 1926. Penny Singleton (1908-2003), born Dorothy McNulty, was an American actress and labour leader. During her six-decade career, Singleton appeared as the comic-strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 films from 1938 until 1950 and the popular Blondie radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetson in the animated series The Jetsons from 1962 to 1963.

Films Selectos
On Saturday, 4 October 1930, the first issue of a new cinematographic periodical was published in Barcelona. It was Films Selectos , an illustrated cinematographic weekly, directed initially by Tomás Gutiérrez Larraya.

Films Selectos was not a fan magazine. With a modern graphic presentation, well-written articles and multi-coloured artistic portraits and film stills, it found a public of intellectuals interested in cinema.

The magazine offered a lively debate on sound in the cinema and the problem of dubbing. In 1936 the editors of Films Selectos formed the Pro-Cinema group, which presented itself with a manifesto.

In October 1936, J. Esteve Quintana took charge of the magazine as the new director. He published the last twenty-five issues during the military conflict in Spain at that time.

Throughout its eight years of existence, in total 328 issues of Films Selectos were published, so later it probably became a monthly in the final years. However, in each issue, there was a collectable leaflet.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 79, 16.4.1932. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

American actress, singer, and dancer Mary Carlisle (1914-2018) starred in more than 60 Hollywood films. The petite, blue-eyed blonde made a name for herself as a wholesome ingénue in numerous 1930s musical comedies. After her marriage in 1942 and a starring role in Dead Men Walk (1943), she retired from acting.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 79. Photo: Distr. Marcel Vandal & Charles Delac. Scene from the German mountain drama Berge in Flammen/Mountains on Fire (Karl Hartl, Luis Trenker, 1931).


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 80, 23.4.1932. Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor in Merely Mary Ann (Henry King, 1931).

Good-looking American actor  Charles Farrell  (1900-1990) was a Hollywood matinée idol of the Jazz Age and Depression era. Between 1927 and 1934, he was very popular thanks to his teaming with Janet Gaynor in 12 screen romances, including 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Lucky Star (1929). Petite Janet Gaynor (1906-1984) was the innocent-eyed, round-faced Hollywood star who won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles in three silent films. She went on to become a leading performer in talking pictures and was one of the most popular Hollywood leading ladies in the 1920s and 1930s.


Spanish leaflets by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 81, 30.4.1932. Photo: Ufa. Renate Müller in the period drama Das Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci/The Flute Concert of Sans-Souci (Gustav Ucicky, 1930). Spanish release title: Concierto historic.

Popular actress Renate Müller (1906-1937) was the toast of late 1920s Berlin. She had a comet-like career in the early German sound cinema, that was abruptly ended by her mysterious early death.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 83, 14.5.1932. Photo: Distr. Marcel Vandal & Charles Delac. Scene from the German mountain drama Berge in Flammen/Mountains on Fire (Karl Hartl, Luis Trenker, 1931).

Luis Trenker (1892-1990) was an Austrian-Italian ski champion, mountain climber, architect, film director, and actor. He portrayed rugged, daring outdoorsmen in the Mountain Film, the genre which seemed to be created especially for him. His films glorified epic struggles such as colonisation and wars for freedom and were set against spectacular, usually mountainous landscapes.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Supplemento Artistico, no. 86. Scene from the silent Hollywood film The Valley of the Giants (Charles Brabin, 1927), starring Milton Sills .

Milton Sills (1882-1930) was a major American silent film actor and university professor. His relatively early death and his unusual career made him a legend.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 89, 25.6.1932.

Stunningly beautiful and highly photogenic Billie Dove (1903-1997) was one of the most popular Hollywood actresses of the 1920s. She was dubbed 'The American Beauty', after the title of one of her films.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 112, 3.12.1932. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Dorothy Jordan .

Dorothy Jordan (1906-1988) was an American film actress, who emerged as an actress at the start of the talkies. She made her film debut in 1929 as Mary Pickford's sister in Sam Taylor's The Taming of the Shrew. Jordan worked for various studios and until 1933 played the female lead in various films. Important parts she had e.g. in Min and Bill (1930) with Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler and in The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) with Bette Davis. In the early 1930s, she worked with various well-known actors, including Ramon Novarro, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, and Jimmy Durante. In 1933 Jordan left the film industry to marry film producer and director Merian C. Cooper.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Supplemento Artistico, no. 114. Marcelle Chantal in the French early sound film Toute sa vie (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1930).

Elegant French stage and film actress Marcelle Chantal (1901–1960) appeared in leading roles in such films as Maurice Tourneur's Au nom de la loi/In the Name of the Law (1932) and La Tragédie impériale/Rasputin (Marcel L'Herbier, 1938) featuring Harry Baur.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 115, 24.12.1932.

During the late 1920s, sexy and bubbly Alice White (1904-1983) was one of Hollywood's most popular stars who received more than 30,000 fan letters a month. She was Warner Bros' blonde answer to Clara Bow, and among her film hits were Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928) and Show Girl (1928). Tabloid reports about a violent love triangle seriously damaged her reputation and her career.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 126, 11.3.1933. Caption: June Vlasek, the beautiful Fox artist.

June Lang (1917-2005), originally credited as June Vlasek was a blue-eyed blonde with a striking, open-faced beauty. She had a very encouraging career in 1930s Hollywood with major roles in The Road to Glory (1936), and two Shirley Temple hearttuggers, Captain January (1936), and Wee Willie Winkie (1937). After appearing in over 30 films, she disappeared from the screen.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 132, 22.4.1933. Lil Dagover and Otto Gebühr in Die Tänzerin von Sanssouci/Barbarina, the King's Dancer (Frederic Zelnik, 1932).

German actor Otto Gebühr (1877-1954) appeared in 102 films between 1917 and 1962. He is best known for his interpretation of Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), a role he played in 16 films and countless stage performances. He was one of the most famous actors of the Weimar period. German, but Dutch-born film actress Lil Dagover (1887-1980) was an exotic, dark beauty, who featured prominently during the golden age of the German silent cinema. She had her breakthrough as the prey of Dr. Caligari's monster in the classic expressionist film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) but gradually her fine and evanescent beauty changed and she turned into a ´Salondame´, a lady of the screen. Her career would span nearly six decades.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 123, 18.2.1933. Photo: Fox. George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor in Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927).

American actor George O'Brien (1899-1985) was a muscular, barrel-chested, yet sensitively talented leading man of classic silent films, like John Ford's The Iron Horse (1924) and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927). He became a different kind of star as a cowboy in B-Westerns during the sound era. Petite Janet Gaynor (1906-1984) was the innocent-eyed, round-faced Hollywood star who won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles in three silent films: 7th Heaven (1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and Street Angel (1928). She went on to become a leading performer in talking pictures and was one of the most popular Hollywood leading ladies in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1934 she was receiving a yearly salary of $252,583 from Fox, making her Hollywood's most highly paid actress.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 134, 6.5.1933. Photo: United Artists. Billie Dove and Chester Morris in Cock of the Air (Tom Buckingham, 1932).

Good-looking American actor Chester Morris (1901-1970) was a Broadway star who became a real film actor in the sound era. Morris was Oscar-nominated for Alibi (1929), but his greatest success was The Big House (1930). Later he played the character Boston Blackie in the popular series of B-films. Stunningly beautiful and highly photogenic Billie Dove (1903-1997) was one of the most popular Hollywood actresses of the 1920s. She was dubbed The American Beauty, after the title of one of her films.


Spanish illustration by Films selectos, Supplemento Artistico, no. 162. Photo: Films Artistica Barcelonesa. Diana Karenne in Le Collier de la reine/The Queen's Necklace (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1929).

Polish actress Diana Karenne (1888-1940) was one of the divas of Italian silent cinema. Between 1916 and 1920, Karenne fascinated audiences with her eccentric dresses and make-up, and with her primadonna behaviour. Afterwards, she had a career in German and French silent cinema.


Spanish illustration by Films selectos, Supplemento Artistico, no. 169. Photo: Films Artistica Barcelonesa. Diana Karenne in Le Collier de la reine/The Queen's Necklace (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1929).


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 176, 24.2.1934. Photo: Cine-Allianz. Hans Jaray in Leise flehen meine Lieder (Willi Forst, 1933), Forst's first film direction is about the life of composer and musician Franz Schubert. In 1934 an English version was made as The Unfinished Symphony, also with Jaray in the lead.

Hans Jaray (1906–1990) was an Austrian actor and playwright who starred as a leading man in several 1930s films, such as the Schubert biopic Leise flehen meine Lieder/Gently My Songs Entreat (1933). The Czech film Pán na roztrhání/Man in Demand on All Sides (1934) with Lida Baarová was based on one of his plays. Following the Anschluss of 1938, Jaray emigrated to the United States but returned to Vienna after the Second World War. He also wrote and directed several television films.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 177, 3.3.1934. Photo: London Films / United Artists. Elisabeth Bergner as Princess Sophie, later Empress Catherine, and Flora Robson as Empress Elisabeth in the British film The Rise of Catherine the Great (Paul Czinner, 1934). The historical film was produced by Alexander Korda and based on the play 'The Czarina' by Lajos Bíró and Melchior Lengyel, about the rise to power of Catherine the Great.

The profoundly sensitive acting of Austrian-British actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986) influenced the German cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. She specialised in a bisexual type that she portrayed in Der Geiger von Florenz and in other film and stage roles. Nazism forced her to go into exile, but she worked successfully in the West End and on Broadway. British Flora Robson (1902-1984) was one of the half-dozen finest dramatic actresses of her generation. Her range extended from queens to murderesses and she was particularly renowned for her performances in plays demanding dramatic and emotional intensity. Her best-known film role was that of Queen Elizabeth I in both Fire Over England (1937) and The Sea Hawk (1940). However, her career was a constant struggle to achieve the roles worthy of her talents.


Spanish leaflet by Films Selectos, Suplemento Artistico, no. 193, 23.1.1934. Dolores del Rio in Madame Dubarry (William Dieterle, 1934).

Mexican-American actress Dolores del Río (1905–1983) was a Hollywood star in the 1920s and 1930s, and one of the most important female actresses of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Del Río was the first major Latin cross-over star in Hollywood and was considered one of the most beautiful faces that have emerged in Hollywood cinema.

Sources: LLuis Benejam (Archivo Cine Lluis Benejam - Material Cinematografico - Spanish), Filmoteca de Catalunya and Enciclopèdia.cat (Catalunyan).

Marisol

Marisol (1948) was a Spanish child star of the 1960s. When she became an adult she became a popular actress and singer under her real name, Pepa Flores.


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarjefher, no. 121. Photo: Vicente Ibanez. Collection: Marlène Pilaete.


Dutch postcard.


Dutch collector card by School of Dancing Joy, Amsterdam, no. 4. On the flip side, the basic steps for the Slow Waltz are explained. This picture was taken in October 1962 during a promotional visit to the Netherlands. Marisol appeared on two TV shows including The Rudi Carrel Show and visited the studio of Radio Veronica. Her second film, Ha llegado un angel / An Angel Has Appeared (Luis Lucia, 1961), premiered later that month in The Netherlands.


Spanish postcard by Ediciones TarjeFher, no. 112, 1964. Photo: Juan Gyenes / Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarjefher / Ediciones Mandolina, no. 126, 1964. Photo: Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarjefher, no. 110. Photo: Juan Gyenes. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Marisol and Jean-Claude Pascal. Spanish postcard by Postal OscarColor, S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 702.

Tómbola
Maria Josefa Flores González was born in Málaga, Spain in 1948. She has an older sister, Victoria, and a younger brother, Enrique. From early on, she demonstrated a great love for singing and traditional flamenco dance.

She was discovered by her future producer Manuel J. Goyanes on Spanish Television in the show Coros y Danzas de Málaga / Songs and Dances of Malaga in 1959. Her cinema debut as Marisol was in the musical Un rayo de luz / A Ray of Light (Luis Lucia, 1960). She became an international sensation, from Spain to Japan. She won the Best Child Actress award at the Venice Film Festival in 1960. In the following decade, she starred in a dozen musical comedy dramas.

The title song of her third film, Tómbola / Lottery (Luis Lucia, 1962), became a Spanish classic. Other of her film vehicles were Marisol rumbo a Río/Marisol Is Bound For Rio (Fernando Palacios, 1963), a Spanish variation on The Parent Trap with Marisol playing both the poor teenager from Madrid as well as her estranged sister in Rio De Janeiro, and La nueva Cenicienta/The New Cinderella (George Sherman, 1964) with Robert Conrad and Fernando Rey.

Mel Ferrer directed her in Cabriola / Everyday Is A Holiday (1965) where she sang one of her most beautiful songs: 'Cabriola'. She also made records and did concerts and TV shows.

The child star became a stunning beauty and in 1967 she starred as a grown-up opposite Jean-Claude Pascal in Las 4 bodas de Marisol / The Four Weddings of Marisol (Luis Lucia, 1967) as a film star with man trouble. She continued to make popular films, including Carola de día, Carola de noche / Carola During Day and Night (Jaime de Armiñán, 1969), a Spanish variation on Roman Holiday about a princess, who secretly goes out by night to find out how Spaniards live. That year she married Carlos Goyanes, the son of her discoverer.


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7171. Photo: Suevia Films. Marisol in Un rayo de luz / A Ray of Light (Luis Lucia, 1960).


Spanish postcard by Edic. Raker, Barcelona, no. 152. Marisol in Un rayo de luz / A Ray of Light (Luis Lucia, 1960).


Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. 5060. Photo: Hafbo. Publicity still for Ha llegado un angel / An Angel Has Appeared (Luis Lucia, 1961).


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7303. Photo: Suevia Films. Marisol and Pulgarcito (Cesáreo Quezadas) in Ha llegado un ángel/An Angel Has Appeared (Luis Lucia, 1961).


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7331. Photo: Suevia Films. Marisol in Ha llegado un angel / An Angel Has Appeared (Luis Lucia, 1961).


Spanish postcard by Édiciones Raker, Barcelona, no. 271. Photo: Dipenfa, S.A. Marisol in Tómbola / Lottery (Luis Lucia, 1962).


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Raker, Barcelona, no. 7590. Photo: Dipenfa, S.A. Marisol in Tómbola / Lottery (Luis Lucia, 1962).

A living myth
Marisol started to appear in more serious films. She played the title character in the thriller La corrupción de Chris Miller / The Corruption of Chris Miller (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1973) opposite Jean Seberg .

She also appeared in Bardem's (the uncle of awarded Spanish actor Javier Bardem) El poder del deseo / The Power of Desire (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1975) opposite British actor Murray Head and in Los días del pasado / The Days of the Past (Mario Camus, 1978) with flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades. She was awarded the Best Actress prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for her role in the latter film.

In 1982 she married Antonio Gades in Cuba. The best man to their wedding was Fidel Castro. She acted with Gades in Bodas de sangre / Blood Wedding (Carlos Saura, 1981) based on Federico García Lorca's revenge play, and Carmen (Carlos Saura, 1983). She worked then under the name Pepa Flores. She appeared in the title role of the Spanish national television series Mariana Pineda in 1984, in which she played a Liberal Party hero.

In 1985, when she was still at the height of her career, she left show business. Her last film was the political film Caso cerrado / Case Closed (Juan Caño Arecha, 1985) with a small role of the young Antonio Banderas . She returned to her homeland, Malaga. She received many invitations to return and requests for TV interviews, but she declined all of them.

In 1986 she and Gades divorced. They have three daughters: Maria, Tamara, and Celia. Her daughter Maria Esteve is a well-known actress in Spain, and her youngest daughter, Celia, is a pop flamenco singer. Pepa Flores lives in Málaga with her partner Máximo Stecchiny and works as a humanitarian activist. Forty years after her retirement, she is 'un mito', a living myth in Spain. She was the subject of a TV miniseries, Marisol (Manuel Palacios, 2009).


Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarjefher, no. 111. Photo: Juan Gyenes.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 287. Photo: Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 650. Photo: Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 657. Photo: Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 660. Photo: Manuel J. Goyanes.


Spanish postcard by Bergas Industrias Graficas, no. 813.


Spanish autograph card. Photo: Vicente Ibanez.


Tribute to Marisol with Tómbola a.o. Source: producionesgallago (YouTube).

Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia and .

Anna Maria Sandri

Exotic-looking Italian actress Anna-Maria Sandri (1935) appeared in European films of the 1950s. After four years in films, she married an American and retired.


West German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1317. Photo: NDF / Allianz / Brünjes. Anna Maria Sandri in Griff nach den Sternen / Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955).


German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 43. Photo: Klaus Collignon.

An adaptation of a brilliant but difficult novel
Anna-Maria Sandri was born Anna Maria Materzanini in 1936 in Rome, Italy. She was also credited under the name Maria Sandri. As a little girl, she already made her film debut as Maria Sandri at the age of 6  as Little Ada in La morte civile / Civil Death (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942).

One of her first films as an adult was Capitan Fantasma / Captain Phantom (Primo Zeglio, 1953), with Frank Latimore. This was an adventure film situated in early 19th century Spain, in which she played the fair daughter of the governor of Cadiz, who is saved by the hero.

Soon followed roles in La Provinciale / The Wayward Wife (Mario Soldati, 1953) starring Gina Lollobrigida , and Terza liceo / Third Class (Luciano Emmer, 1954).

In 1954 Anna-Maria Sandri also appeared in an adaptation of Stendhal's brilliant but difficult novel 'Le Rouge et le Noir', the French-Italian historical drama Le rouge et le noir / The Red and the Black, adapted and directed by Claude Autant-Lara.

Gérard Philipe stars as a carpenter's son who becomes a tutor seduces his employer's wife and later becomes a priest. According to Hal Erickson at AllMovie, “The film manages to hold the audience in its thrall for 2 hours and 50 minutes”.


Spanish postcard by Soberanas (Sobe), no. 165.


Yugoslavian postcard by Sedmo Siljo. Photo: IOM, Beograd.

Retiring at 20
The following year Anna-Maria Sandri provided a dash of feminine interest in the adventure film Fortune Carree / Square Fortune (Bernard Borderie, 1955), based on a novel by Joseph Kessel.

Mexican filmstar Pedro Armendariz plays an undisciplined soldier who opts for the life of a mercenary in the North African desert.

In Germany, she appeared in the drama Griff nach den Sternen / Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955) with Liselotte Pulver.

Her best-remembered role is Mabrouka ben Yussef, the daughter of a Bedouin Sheikh in the fanciful wartime drama The Black Tent (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1956). Anthony Steel stars as a British soldier stationed in Libya. When he is wounded, he takes shelter with a Bedouin tribe. He marries the sheikh's daughter, Anna Maria, before getting down to fending off the Nazis.

Then, the film career of Anna-Maria Sandri stopped abruptly. At 20, she married an American and is nowadays still married to him. They have three children.


West German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1678. Photo: Brünjes / NDF-Film / Allianz-Film. Anna Maria Sandri in Griff nach den Sternen / Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955).


West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1383. Photo: NDF / Allianz / Brünjes. Anna Maria Sandri in Griff nach den Sternen / Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955).


West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1505. Photo: NDF / Allianz / Brünjes. Anna Maria Sandri in Griff nach den Sternen / Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie, page now defunct), CITWF (Page now defunct), , and Wikipedia (Italian and English).

Astérix & Obélix contre César (1999)

French comic book hero Astérix by Alberto Uderzo and René Goscinny has become a major film franchise, both in animated and live-action form. Most notable is the feature Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999), starring Christian Clavier, Gerard Depardieu, and Roberto Benigni. At the time of its release, the film was the most expensive production in French cinema of all time. It was a box-office success and would be followed by several sequels.


Big Happy New Year card by Pathé. Photo: Christian Clavier and Gérard Depardieu in Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


French postcard by Pathé. Photo: Katharina / Renn Productions / TF 1 Films / Bavaria / Melampo. Christian Clavier in Astérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


French postcard by Sonis, no. C 944. Photo: Etienne George / Renn Productions.  Laetitia Casta in Asterix & Astérix et Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).

The one little Gaulish village that has not surrendered to the Roman occupation
In 1927, the French comic book artist and scriptwriter Albert Uderzo was born in the town of Fismes, in the Marne department of north-eastern France. In the 1930s, Albert developed a fascination for American comic and animated cartoons and was particularly impressed with the works of Walt Disney .

He was a poor student at school but received good grades in sketching and art-related lessons. By the 1950s, Albert Uderzo had become a professional artist, and he met his partner René Goscinny in 1951.

During the 1950s, Uderzo provided the artwork for moderately successful series such as the historical fiction series 'Oumpah-pah' and 'Jehan Pistolet' (both written by Goscinny) and the aviation comic series 'Tanguy et Laverdure' (written by Jean-Michel Charlier).

'Asterix' debuted in October 1959 in the French magazine Pilote, created by René Goscinny and Uderzo. In 1961, the first stand-alone effort, 'Astérix le Gaulois' (Asterix the Gaul), was released. It was turned into an animation film, Astérix le Gaulois/Asterix the Gaul (Ray Goossens, 1965).

The comic book series centres around the titular Asterix, the bravest warrior in a small town in the middle of Roman-occupied Gaul in the year 50 B.C. — and the one burg that has not surrendered to the occupation. Instead, with the help of a magic potion that gives him super-strength (and his best friend Obélix, who fell into a cauldron of the potion as a child, and as such is permanently superhumanly strong), he spends each instalment fighting and defeating the Roman army and keeping his village safe from harm.


French postcard by McCann Communications, Nanterre, offered by Agfa. Photo: Etienne George / Renn Productions. Michel Galabru and Daniel Prevost in Astérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


Small French postcard by AGFA / McCann Communications, Nanterre / Renn Productions. Photo: Etienne George. Christian Clavier and Gérard Depardieu in Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


Small French postcard by McCann Communications, Nanterre, offered by AGFA. Photo: Etienne George / Renn Productions. Roberto Benigni , Gottfried John and Jean-Pierre Castaldi in Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).

Not a masterpiece and not an awful movie
Asterix became one of the most successful European comic book series. There were many film adaptations, including the animation films Astérix et Cléopâtre/Asterix & Cleopatra (René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, 1968), and Les 12 travaux d'Astérix/The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (René Goscinny, Henri Gruel, Albert Uderzo, Pierre Watrin, 1976).

A box-office success was Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999) with Christian Clavier as Asterix, Gérard Depardieu as Obélix, and Roberto Benigni as the scheming centurion Lucius Detritus. After this success, more live-action adaptations followed including Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre/Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (Alain Chabat, 2002) with Monica Bellucci as Cleopatra, and Astérix aux jeux olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frédéric Forestier, Thomas Langmann, 2008) with Alain Delon as Julius Caesar.

Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar combines plots of several Asterix stories, mostly 'Asterix the Gaul' (Getafix's abduction), 'Asterix and the Soothsayer', 'Asterix and the Goths' (the Druid conference), 'Asterix the Legionary' (Obelix becoming smitten with Panacea) and 'Asterix the Gladiator' (the characters fighting in the circus).

However, jokes and references from many other albums abound, including a humorous exchange between Caesar and Brutus taken from 'Asterix and Cleopatra', and the villain Lucius Detritus is based on Tullius Detritus, the main antagonist of 'Asterix and the Roman Agent' (known as Tortuous Convolvulus in the English translation of the comic).

"Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar is not a masterpiece in any shape or form and has its problems but it is not an awful movie", Bethany Cox writes on IMDb : "In the French version there are enough deft touches in the script to amuse I think. The pacing is good, while the acting is fine. Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu are well cast in the title roles, while Roberto Benigni sinks his teeth into his role as the scheming centurion. In conclusion, nothing fantastic, but it isn't that bad."


French postcard by Pathé. Photo: Katharina / Renn Productions / TF 1 Films / Bavaria / Melampo. Laetitia Casta in Astérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


French postcard by Pathé. Photo: Katharina / Renn Productions / TF1 Films Production / Bavaria Entertainment / Canal+. Roberto Benigni in Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 943. Photo: Etienne George / Renn Productions. French poster for Astérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999) with Christian Clavier and Gérard Depardieu .

The best-selling European comic book series
The Asterix series has gone on to sell more than 400 million copies, translated into more than 100 languages internationally. It makes the series the best-selling European comic book series, and the second best-selling comic book series in history after 'One Piece'.

René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo collaborated on the comic until the death of Goscinny in 1977. Uderzo then took over the writing until 2009.

Since 1951, Uderzo was married to Ada Milani, with whom he had a daughter Sylvie Uderzo. He sold his shares of the company Editions Albert René (which owns the rights to Astérix) to the publishing company Hachette in 2007. He had a public falling out with daughter Sylvie who also owned shares of the original company and disagreed with her father's decision.

After a few years of mostly working on short stories and comic strips, Uderzo announced his retirement in 2011. Since Uderzo's retirement, the work on Asterix has been handled by writer Jean-Yves Ferri and artist Didier Conrad under a deal that allows Lagardere-owned publisher Hachette to continue producing the series.

The most recent book is 'L'Iris blanc' (Asterix and the White Iris), published in 2023. It is the first to be written by Fabcaro, and the sixth to be illustrated by Didier Conrad. Parc Astérix, a French theme park based on the property, has brought in 50 million visitors since opening outside Paris in 1989.


French postcard by Franceco, Paris, no. 0963013. Image: Editions Albert Rene / Goscinny / Uderzo, 1984. Caption: Goscinny-Uderzo, Le chaudron vide. (The empty cauldron).


North-Macedonian poster card for Astérix & Obélix contre César / Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999) with Christian Clavier, Gérard Depardieu and Roberto Benigni .

Sources: Bethany Cox (IMDb), Georg Szalai (The Hollywood Reporter), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Val Kilmer (1959-2025)

On 1 April 2025, Val Kilmer (1959) died of pneumonia in Los Angeles. The American actor was known for such blockbusters as Top Gun (1986), Batman Forever (1995) and Heat (1995). His chameleon-like ability to plunge fully and breathlessly into his characters catapulted him to fame in the mid-1980s but his reputation to be a troublesome actor and a series of disappointing films held him back from megastardom. Kilmer was 65.


French postcard by Editions Mercuri, no. 1620. Photo: Warner Bros. Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995).


British postcard by Heroes Publishing Ltd., London, no. SPC 2895.

Iceman
Val Edward Kilmer was born in Los Angeles, in 1959. He was the son of Gladys Swanette (Ekstadt) and Eugene Dorris Kilmer, who was a real estate developer and aerospace equipment distributor. His family was a textbook example of mixed blood. He has Scottish, Swedish, Irish, Mongolian, and Cherokee blood in his veins, among others.

Val grew up in the San Fernando Valley. His parents divorced when he was 9 years old. His first auditions were for commercials at 13 years old. When he was 17 years old, his younger brother Wesley who was an epileptic, drowned in a jacuzzi at age 15. Kilmer learned acting at the famous Juilliard Drama School in New York. He was the youngest student in history to be admitted to Juilliard.

In 1983 he played his first television role and a year later he made his film debut with the lead role as blond rock idol Nick Rivers in Top Secret! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, 1984), a spoof of Elvis films and WWII spy movies. Andrea LeVasseur at AllMovie : "An absurd role which Kilmer plays with complete sincerity, it reveals genuine musical talent and Kilmer achieves complete credibility as a rock star."

He had his big break in the role of Tom 'Iceman' Kazanski in Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) starring Tom Cruise . Top Gun grossed a total of $344,700,000 worldwide and made Kilmer a major star. He gave a believable performance as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991). He had spent close to a year before production dressing in Morrison-like clothes and had spent time at Morrison's old hangouts along the Sunset Strip. Kilmer did his own singing during the concert pieces and a number of his Doors songs were used on the soundtrack, sans dubbing.

Two years later, Kilmer played two more American legends, the spirit of Elvis Presley in True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993), which was written by Quentin Tarantino , and gunslinger Doc Holliday in the Western Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993).


British postcard by New-Line, no. 193. Photo: Paramount. Tom Cruise , Val Kilmer, Rick Rossovich, and Anthony Edwards in Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986).


Belgian postcard by Boomerang Free Cards. Photo: Warner Bros. Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995).

Batman
Val Kilmer took over the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne from Michael Keaton in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995). Batman Forever was a success at the box office, despite receiving mixed reviews from critics. Although he enjoyed playing Batman his working relationship with director Joel Schumacher was poor. Kilmer openly refused to repeat the Bruce Wayne role for Batman and Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997), and he was succeeded by George Clooney .

Due to his persistent need for an on-set dialogue with his directors, Kilmer had clashed earlier with Michael Apted on the set of Thunderheart (1992) and later infuriated director John Frankenheimer on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). However, others considered him a devoted, hard-working professional. Warwick Davis, Kilmer's co-star in Willow (Ron Howard, 1988), said he had very fond memories of working with Kilmer, stating that Kilmer had a great sense of humour and was very dedicated to the job. In addition to acting, Kilmer was also engaged in writing. In 1981 he wrote the play 'How It All Began', performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Later in the 1980s, he wrote a poetry collection, 'My Eden after Burns'. Kilmer also acted on the stage. He played Hamlet at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival. In 2004 he played Moses in a musical and in 2005 he starred in London in David Mamet's play 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'.

His other notable films include Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino , the disappointing The Saint (Philip Noyce, 1997), and the action-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005) with Robert Downey Jr. Another disappointment was the historical epic Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004) in which he played the father of Alexander, King Philip, opposite Colin Farrell as Alexander. The Disney Studio's Sci-Fi-action thriller Deja Vu (Tony Scott, 2006) teamed Kilmer and Denzel Washington as feds who travel back in time to stop a terrorist's (Jim Caviezel) attempt to blow up a ferry. He also appeared in Werner Herzog's semi-sequel Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009), and Francis Ford Coppola's Horror opus Twixt (2011), with Bruce Dern and Elle Fanning.

Kilmer was a longtime board member of the New Mexico State Film Commission, which tries to persuade Los Angeles-based filmmakers and studios to film on location in New Mexico. From 1988 to 1996, Val Kilmer was married to British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while filming Willow (Ron Howard, 1988). They had two children: a daughter, Mercedes (1992), and a son, Jack (1995). Val Kilmer has gone through a battle with throat cancer. A procedure on his trachea reduced his voice to a rasp and rendered him short of breath. He underwent chemotherapy and two tracheotomies. In 2020, Kilmer reported that he had been cancer-free for four years and that he uses a feeding tube to feed himself because he can no longer eat.

Val Kilmer reprised his role as LT Tom 'Iceman' Kazanskin in the Top Gun sequel Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2021). He also returned in the Twixt sequel B'Twixt Now and Sunrise (Francis Ford Coppola, 2022). He also wrote, directed and performed a one-man play about Mark Twain. Kilmer himself was a lifelong Christian Scientist. Val Kilmer died of pneumonia in 2025 in Los Angeles at age 65.


British postcard by Slow Dazzle Worldwide, no 10 in a series of 16. Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995).


British postcard by Boomerang Media. Photo: Paramount. Val Kilmer in The Saint (Philip Noyce, 1997).

Sources: Andrea LeVasseur (AllMovie - Page now defunct), (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and .

Nero on stage and in film

In film history, the Roman Emperor Nero has often been presented as the most evil one of them all, and as the Antichrist who started the persecutions of the Christians after the Great Fire of Rome. Nero is on stage and screen is one of the themes of the second and last day of the workshop Museum of Dream Worlds at Eye Collection Centre in Amsterdam. EFSP collaborator and co-organiser of the workshop Ivo Blom wrote again the text for this post.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 699/2. Photo: Filmhaus Bruckmann / Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Emil Jannings as Nero and Lillian Hall-Davis as Licia in the Italo-German epic Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924), one of the many adaptations of the classic novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Here, we see Nero grabbing Licia after pretending to save her from the clutches of Vinicius.


British postcard. J.F. Grimm & Co., London F.C. Photo: Cines. Postcard for the Italian epic film Quo vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni, 1913). Caption: Watching the massacre of the Christians. Nero (Carlo Cattaneo) is instead watching Petronius ( Gustavo Serena ) and asking him what he thinks of the spectacle. "It is worthy of you", the latter responds.


Spanish minicard by Reclam Films, Mallorca, no. 1 of 6. Photo: Gloria Film. Vittorio Rossi Pianelli as Nerone and Maria Caserini as Agrippina in Nerone e Agrippina (Mario Caserini, 1914). Caption: Nero's banquet.


British postcard in the series Film Shots by Film Weekly. Photo: Paramount. Charles Laughton and Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. De Mille, 1932).


Cover page of a film programme by Illustrierte Film-Kurier, no. 1860. Gino Cervi as Nero in Nerone e Messalina / Nero and the Burning of Rome (Primo Zeglio, 1953).

Less evil than we know him
Nero (37-68 CE) was the fifth Roman emperor (54–68 CE). Born in Latium, he was Julia Agrippina's son and the emperor Claudius's stepson and heir. Nero was known for his debaucheries and his limitless enthusiasm for theatre, considering himself one of the best actors and poets of his time. In modern times, several novels, plays, and films have him in the lead. In cinema adaptations of novels and plays like 'Britannicus', 'Quo vadis?' and 'The Sign of the Cross', Nero is often presented as the evil antagonist. However, historians now contest his involvement in the Great Fire of Rome and the persecution of the Christians.

Sources such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica indicate that, especially during the early years of his reign, Nero was less evil than we know him. He executed much fewer adversaries than his predecessor, Claudius, gave more independence to the Senate, was lenient to his critics, gave slaves the opportunity to complain about unjust masters, and inaugurated competitions in poetry and gymnastics instead of gladiatorial combats. He also helped cities after a disaster and helped the Jews at the request of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

Nero was only 16 when he became emperor, and his mother initially controlled the government, but Burrus and Seneca, Nero’s tutor, spurred the young man to take things into his own hands. Gradually, Nero became more brutal and had his stepbrother Britannicus, his mother Agrippina, and his wife Octavia murdered, so he had no competitors anymore and could marry Poppaea Sabina.

It is doubtful he was responsible for the Great Fire of Rome in 64, but he saw it as an opportunity to rebuild the city in the Greek style and build a vast palace of which the Domus Aurea remains, which, if completed, would have covered a third of Rome. Suetonius and Tacitus suggest that Nero started the fire to satisfy his architectural plans and then accused the Christians, who were already suspected of witchcraft, of setting Rome on fire when the populace protested.

While according to the Christian tradition, the apostles Peter and Paul fell victim to the Neronian persecutions, the biggest persecutions of the Christians would follow among later emperors such as Decius and Diocletian. Discontent against Nero grew, but he survived the so-called Piso conspiracy in 65. Still, of the 41 conspirators, only 18 died, including Seneca. Eventually, the legions chose Galba as their new emperor. Nero fled Rome and probably committed suicide in 68. With his death, the so-called Julio-Claudian dynasty ended.


Russian postcard. Russian opera singer Lev Klementjev in the opera 'Nerone' by Anton Rubinstein. This was one of his best-known roles, of which his aria 'Invan, invan' was also put on records in 1902/1903 by G & T and in 1909 by Gramophone. Though some sources state that he was the first Russian to perform Rubinstein's 'Nero' (1875-1876), which despite its French roots had its world premiere in 1879 in Hamburg, Germany, English Wikipedia states that the first Russian performance was in 1884, four years before Klemenjev debuted, and was sung in Italian. The dance scenes were choreographed by Marius Petipa. The first French version was staged in 1894 at Rouen. Several singers, such as Enrico Caruso, sang arias from 'Nero'.


British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., no. 354 R. Photo: F.W. Burford. Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Nero in the stage production 'Nero' (1906). Stephen Phillips’ play 'Nero' opened at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, in 1906. In addition to Tree, Constance Collier played Poppaea, while Tree's wife Helen Maud Holt played Agrippina, the mother of Nero.


British postcard by Rotary Photo, no. 4039 D. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield. Constance Collier as Poppaea in the stage play 'Nero' (1906).


French postcard. Photo: E. Michel, Lillebonne. Scene from the stage play 'Britannicus' by Jean Racine, performed on 19 July 1908 by the actors of the Comédie française at the Théâtre Romain of Lillebonne, France. Jacques Fenoux played Nero, Madeleine Roch replaced Jeanne Delvair as Agrippina, Thési Borgos played Junie, René Alexandre Narcisse, Albert Lambert père Burrhus, and Albert Reyval Britannicus. The director of the play was Gabriel Le Vallier. The reputed journal, Comoedia called the performance superb and worthy of Racine. Madeleine Roch (Agrippina) can be seen on the left of this card. The young man on the throne may be Fenoux as Nero. The man on the right could be Lambert père as Burrhus.


Austrian postcard. Photo: Ludwig Gutmann, Vienna, Sept. 1910. no. 10. Mr. Recht as Nero and Helene Oberländer as Poppaea in the opera 'Quo Vadis?' at the Wiener Volksoper.

Nero in theatre, literature and painting (and film)
In Christian iconography, Nero is often presented as the Antichrist, the mad, debauched and paranoid emperor, who either because of whims and fears, or manipulated by the evil advices of his surrounding entourage, such as his general Tigellinus and empress Poppaea, takes terrible decisions, such as burning down Rome and massacring the Christians. In later centuries, this was even situated in an anachronistic setting, such as the Colosseum as the martyr’s execution place, while that was built much after, by the Flavian emperors Vespasian and Titus. A rich iconography of Nero as the Antichrist and sadistic, debauched emperor developed through the ages, in painting and on stage. In particular, Jean Racine’s classic tragedy, 'Britannicus' (1669), needs to be mentioned here. Despite the title, the story mostly deals with Nero and his mother, Agrippina. In this version, it is a bit less about power play than desire, as Nero wants to possess Britannicus’s fiancée Junia, although it is also about Nero getting rid of the clutches of his possessive and power-driven mother. Eventually, Britannicus is poisoned by Nero during a dinner proposed as a reconciliation between the two stepbrothers. The play became a classic of the repertory of the Comédie Française, only second to Racine’s 'Andromaque'. Important performers of Nero in 'Britannicus' were the actor François-Joseph Talma (1799), whom Eugène Delacroix painted as Nero in 1852 or 1853. Mounet-Sully first played Nero in 'Britannicus' in 1872, and afterward in 1885, 1896 and 1908. Jacques Fenoux played Nero in 1908 at the open-air Théâtre Romain in Lillebonne. In 1912, Pathé Frères would produce a silent film version, directed by Camille de Morlhon, with Jean Hervé as Nero, Romuald Joubé as Britannicus and Gabriel Signoret as the evil plotter Narcisse. Already in 1908, André Calmettes may have filmed a recorded dialogue with the actress Réjane in 'Britannicus'. In the sound era, it was in particular for television that the play was staged, both in France and elsewhere.

In 1895, British playwright, director and actor Wilson Barrett launched his play 'The Sign of the Cross', first performed in St. Louis, Missouri, a few months after in Leeds, U.K., and in 1896 in London. The plot deals with Marcus Superbus, a Roman patrician under Nero, who falls in love with a young woman (Mercia) and converts to Christianity for her. Poppea, Nero's wife, is in unrequited lust for Marcus. In the end, Mercia and Marcus sacrifice their lives in the arena to the lions. 'The Sign of the Cross' is a four-act historical tragedy which remained popular for several decades. Wilson Barrett said its Christian theme was his attempt to bridge the gap between the Church and the stage. The plot somewhat resembles that of Henryk Sienkiewicz's historical novel 'Quo vadis?'. After two silent film adaptations, Barrett's play would be the basis for Cecil B. DeMille 's epic Quo Vadis (1932), although Barrett's daughter opposed the film. It was the first DeMille sound film with a religious theme. Part of the plot of 'The Sign of the Cross' is similar to 'Quo vadis?' which was also turned into stage plays before it was adapted for various film versions. Both plays feature a main character named Marcus, a proud and wealthy Roman, falling in love with a Christian girl. Both tales are set against the same historical context of Neronian times, but the ending of Barrett's play completely contrasts with 'Quo vadis?' Henryk Sienkiewicz lets Marcus (Vinicius, not Superbus) and Lygia (not Mercia) survive and presumably live happily ever after, while Nero is the one who dies

The Sign of the Cross was originally produced by Wilson Barrett at the Grand Opera House, St. Louis, Missouri, in 1895, with Maud Jeffries as Mercia. It was first presented on Broadway at the Knickerbocker Theatre in late 1895. Barrett successfully presented it in England, starting at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, in 1895. He brought it to the Lyric Theatre, London, in 1896. In 1904, a British film adaptation of the play was made by William Haggar. Haggar's sons Will and James played Marcus and Nero, and his daughter Jenny played Mercia. The first feature-length adaptation was made by Frederick Thomson for Famous Players and released by Paramount in 1914. Acclaimed actor William Farnum played Marcus, while Rosina Henley played Mercia and Lila Barclay Poppaea. A tinted version of this film was found in the Desmet Collection of the Dutch Eye Film Museum. Still, in its opulent mise-en-scene - despite the Depression and smaller budgets - Cecil B. DeMille 's sound version of 1932 beats them all. Not only for the performances of Fredric March as Marcus, Elissa Landi as Mercia and Claudette Colbert as Poppaea, but also for the mise-en-scene, the mobile framing and the ingenious use of sound stand out. The film was also notorious for its sex and sadism, which was later cut out but reinserted in the restored version. In addition to the stage play 'The Sign of the Cross', the British stage also majorly contributed by the lesser-known play 'Nero' by Stephen Phillips, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Nero and Constance Collier as Poppaea. Stephen Phillips’s 'Nero' opened at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, in 1906.

In the late 19th century, Nero came to the foreground, not only on stage but also in literature and painting. First of all, this can be seen in Henryk Siemiradzki’s painting 'Nero’s Torches' (1876). It inspired Siemiradzki’s compatriot Henryk Sienkiewicz to involve this scene in his novel 'Quo vadis?', which was first launched as a feuilleton in Poland in 1895-1896 and then came out as a novel in 1896, so one year after 'The Sign of the Cross' hit the American and British stages. The novel was instantly a huge success. It was translated into 50 languages and was endlessly reprinted. Sienkiewicz even won the Nobel Prize for literature. One year after the novel appeared, Siemiradzki painted 'A Christian Dirce' (1897), which clearly refers to Sienkiewicz’s tale of the Christian girl who is tied to a raging bull, although in Siemiradzki’s version, both bull and woman die.

Sienkiewicz’s novel 'Quo vadis?' soon inspired various stage plays. The first was an Italian version in 1900 by Silvio D’Arborio. In 1901, a French version followed, adapted by Émile Moreau. The Italian play was performed by the Achille Mauri company (Compagnia drammatica della Città di Roma) at the Teatro Manzoni in Rome. Giovanni Novelli played a grim Nero, while future film actor Dillo Lombardi played Petronius, Marisa Borisi-Micheluzzi played Eunice and Dario Ferraresi Chilo. In contrast to the French stage version of 1901, the Italian version was less close to Racine's Nero in his 'Britannicus' (1669), which by the 1900s had become a classic of the repertory of the Comédie Française. Chilo became a commedia dell'arte character, and Lygia was presented as less chaste and Joan of Arc-like than in the French version. Also, the Italian version strongly focussed on the Catholic message of the tale and the troubles of the Christian martyrs. Cora Laparcerie played Lygia and Gilda Darthy Poppaea in the French stage play staged at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Edmond Duquesne played Nero. The journal Le Théâtre issued a special issue on the play, which included colour illustrations of the main female actors. Loads of postcards with Miéris as Eunice were issued at the time.


French postcard in the series 'Quo vadis?' (1901) by Ed. I. Lapina, Paris, no. 1692. Illustration: 'Nero at Baiae' by Jan Styka. In 1901-1903, the Polish artist Jan Styka made a large series of watercolours which were also issued as postcards and which were the basis for the book illustrations (etchings) he did for the three-part deluxe edition by Flammarion of the French edition of the novel 'Quo vadis?' by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz. For years, the original watercolours by Styka were exhibited in his Quo vadis museum at the Villa Cartosella in Capri.


French postcard by J. Lapina & Cie, Paris, no. 25. 311. Illustration: Jan Styka.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5. Photo: Filmhaus Bruckmann / Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Bruto Castellani as Ursus and Lilian Hall-Davis as Licia in the Italo-German epic Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924). Here, we see Ursus liberating Licia after he has conquered the raging bull. Castellani's face and hair are drawn afterwards. In the restored version of the film, the nudity is not visible.


German-Polish postcard by Verlag A. Raczynski, Krakow / Farbenlichtdruck Martin Rommel, Stuttgart, 1906, no. 6. Illustration: Piotr Stachiewicz. Caption: The banquet at Nero's. The first illustrations of Stachiewicz's work appeared in magazines from 1896 onward, while postcards were reissued many times between 1900 and 1930. He was the favourite illustrator of the novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz.


Italian postcard for the early epic Quo vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni, Cines 1913), adapted from Henryk Sienkiewicz's classic novel and the biggest film hit of 1913 worldwide. Caption: The death of the gladiator. This image cites Jean-Léon Gérôme's famous painting 'Pollice verso' (Thumbs down, 1872) and was often used in the publicity for the film. In the back, the emperor Nero (Carlo Cattaneo) makes the sign of thumbs down, the sign for the conqueror to kill his adversary. Flanking Nero are, at left Tigellinus (Cesare Moltroni) and right Petronius ( Gustavo Serena ). To the left of the imperial box, the Vestal Virgins are seated.

Nero in film
Probably the oldest film on Nero is the Lumière production Néron essayant des poisons sur des esclaves (1896) by Georges Hatot, a single shot film. It reminds me of the painting 'Néron et Locuste essayant des poisons sur un esclave' (date unknown) by Alexis-Joseph Mazerolle, in which Nero and his poison monger Locusta test poison before it is given to Britannicus. This scene returns in the early Italian film Agrippina (Cines, 1911) by Enrico Guazzoni. Two years later, Guazzoni directed the epic Quo vadis? (1913), in which Nero also has an important part, even if not the lead. Louis Feuillade , now better known for his later crime serials such as Fantomas and Judex, produced in the early 1910s a series of historical short films. These included Le fils de Locuste (1911), in which not Nero but Locusta has the lead, masterfully recited in a verisimilar way by Renée Carl, opposite Georges Wague as Nero. Already in 1901, Ferdinand Zecca filmed for Pathé Frères the novel 'Quo vadis?', remarkably soon after the Moreau stage play version. Just like Hatot’s film, it was a single-take film, which starts with the banquet at Nero’s palace where Lygia is saved from the clutches of Vinicius by Ursus and ends with the Fire of Rome. In between, we see female dancers and two gladiators, who mimic Jean-Léon Gérôme’s famous painting, 'Police verso' (1872).

Around 1900, several postcard series were released on 'Quo vadis?'. Polish painter Jan Styka illustrated a French edition of the novel, which was edited by Flammarion. His watercolours were shown at the Paris Salon and would be exhibited for years at Styka’s villa on the island of Capri. Another postcard series was illustrated by Polish painter Piotr Stachiewicz. After Quo vadis (1901), several early films would return to Neronian Rome, in particular to its persecutions. Most famous was the Ambrosio production Nerone (Luigi Maggi, Arturo Ambrosio, 1909), with Alberto Capozzi as Nero. It was distributed over the world and was well received everywhere. The film reduces Nero’s tale by suggesting that he set fire to Rome when the populace rebelled against his killing of Octavia. At the end of his life, he has a vision - a giant projection screen within the film - of his past massacres. In this scene, Gérôme’s painting 'The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer' is cited. Most scenes are presented like a series of tableaux vivants with painted backdrops. Depth is suggested by using diagonals instead of frontal views. According to Maria Wyke in 'Projecting the Past' (1997), the film combined various elder sources such as Monteverdi’s opera 'L’incoronazione di Poppea' (1642) and Pietro Cossa’s tragedy 'Nerone' (1872). Cossa’s play would later also be the basis of Pietro Mascagni’s opera 'Nerone' (1935). Another opera is Arrigo Boito’s 'Nerone', first performed in 1924. There are also two older operas on Nero, 'Agrippina' (1709) by Georg Friedrich Händel, and 'Nero' (1875) by Anton Rubinstein.

After the early years of cinema, Nero was given a major part in Enrico Guazzoni’s major epic Quo vadis? (1913), even if the lead was for Amleto Novelli as Marcus Vinicius, who afterwards would become Guazzoni’s favourite Antiquity film hero, while strongman Bruto Castellani played Ursus, who conquers the bull before the eyes of all in the arena. In 1914, renowned stage and film actor Vittorio Rossi-Pianelli played Nero in the major epic Nerone e Agrippina, with Maria Caserini as Nero’s ambitious mother. The film was directed by Caserini’s husband, Mario Caserini, produced by the Turinese company Gloria Film, and distributed in Europe by Pathé. Unfortunately, the only existing print of the film lacks all of the spectacular scenes in the arena, which our Spanish minicards and original programmes by Pathé do show. Unfortunately, the film Nero (J. Gordon Edwards, 1922) is considered lost. It was shot at the Fox studios in Rome, with Jacques Grétillat as Nero, Violet Mersereau as Marcia, Paulette Duval as Poppaea and Sandro Salvini as the young hero Horatius. In the end, the film had been too costly, so Fox ended its studio in Rome soon afterwards.

In the 1924 version of Quo vadis? , Nero’s part was substantially enlarged and altered when the prominent German cinema actor Emil Jannings played the part of Nero. In contrast to the 1913 version, Jannings is no longer the rather dimly witted emperor but a cunning sadist and womanizer. Under the mask of politeness, he shows unlimited lust and aggression, which can only be tempered by Petronius’s flattery, cunning, and actions – until he falls from grace. Jannings’ name was even prominently displayed as a draw on the film’s posters. In the sound era, Mervyn LeRoy shot a new epic version for MGM, Quo Vadis (1951), at the newly refurbished Cinecittà studios in Rome. Peter Ustinov impressed as a cruel and paranoid Nero opposite Robert Taylor as Vinicius and Deborah Kerr as Lygia, called Lycia here.

Also in 1951, Mario Soldati directed an Italian comedy called O.K. Nerone, with Gino Cervi as Nero. Cervi reprised his part in a dramatic version in Nerone e Messalina (Primo Zeglio, 1953). Three years later, Alberto Sordi played Nero in the comedy Mio figlio Nerone (Steno, 1956). Preceding these 1950s parodies of Nero, the vaudeville actor Petrolini had already made fun of Nero in Nerone (1930), a lost film by Alessandro Blasetti. Some say that this box office hit in Italy at the time criticised Mussolini and his Third Rome. Comedies didn’t stop there. In 1970, a new Nerone was made with Pippo Franco as Nerone, directed by Castellacci & Pingito. In 1985, Klaus Maria Brandauer played the notorious emperor in Franco Rossi’s drama mini-series Quo vadis?. Finally, there is a Polish production, Quo vadis? (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 2001) with Michał Bajor as Nero.


Italian postcard by G.G. Falci, Milano, no. 159. Photo: La Fotominio. Emil Jannings as Nero and Raimondo van Riel as Tigellinus in Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924). Caption: They heard the menacing shouts of the revolting mob.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 176/12. Photo: Paramount. Elissa Landi in the American epic The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1932), based on the original 1895 play by Wilson Barrett.


Dutch-German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 176/4. Photo: Paramount. Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1932). On the back: Boekhandel Leonard Tijssen, Leeuwarden. Claudette Colbert as Empress Poppaea, bathing in donkey milk. Pliny the Elder describes how Poppaea indeed did so: "It is generally believed that ass milk effaces wrinkles in the face, renders the skin more delicate, and preserves its whiteness: and it is a well-known fact, that some women are in the habit of washing their face with it seven times daily, strictly observing that number. Poppaea, the wife of Emperor Nero, was the first to practice this; indeed, she had sitting baths, prepared solely with ass milk, for which purpose whole troops of she-asses used to attend her on her journeys." The dolphin fountain is copied from an 18th-century fountain by Vanvitelli at the Royal Palace in Caserta.


Vintage American still by MGM, no. 51/211. Peter Ustinov as Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), which was shot at the Cinecittà studios in Rome.


West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. S 780. Photo: Union Film, Den Haag. Brigitte Bardot in Mio figlio Nerone / Nero's Mistress (Steno, 1956). The mural in the background is an imitation of the frescoes in the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii.

Sources: Ivo Blom (Quo vadis. Cabiria and the 'Archaeologists', 2003), and research project Museum of Dream Worlds.

Julius Caesar

Today starts the workshop Museum of Dream Worlds at Eye Collection Centre in Amsterdam. One of the themes is Julius Caesar, as represented in the early films Julius Caesar (Vitagraph, 1908), Giulio Cesare (Itala, 1909) and Cajus Julius Caesar (Cines, 1914). Maria Wyke (UCl, London) and Eric Moormann (Radboud University Nijmegen) will moderate a slot related to this theme and these films. EFSP collaborator Ivo Blom is the co-organiser of the workshop and wrote the text for this post.


Spanish minicard by Reclam Films, no. 3 of 12. Amleto Novelli as Julius Caesar and Irene Mattalia as Servilia in Cajus Julius Caesar (Enrico Guazzoni, 1914), released in Spain as Julio César. Julius Caesar and Servilia love each other, despite the resistance of her family. They will marry in secret.


Spanish minicard by Reclam Films, no. 11 of 12. Amleto Novelli as Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar in Cajus Julius Caesar (Enrico Guazzoni, 1914), released in Spain as Julio César. Scene: The assassination of Julius Caesar in the Senate.


Spanish minicard by Reclam Films, no. 6 of 12. Amleto Novelli as Julius Caesar and Ruffo Geri as Brutus in Cajus Julius Caesar (Enrico Guazzoni, 1914), released in Spain as Julio César. Brutus watching the assassinated Julius Caesar at the feet of the statue of Pompey in the Senate. He doesn't know yet that he has killed his father.

The influences of Shakespeare
The life and death of Julius Caesar are closely linked to one stage play, William Shakespeare 's 'Julius Caesar' (1599. Most of the early films on the emperor, like the Vitagraph production Julius Caesar (J. Stuart Blackton, 1908), the Itala film Giulio Cesare (Giovanni Pastrone, 1909) and the Cines production Bruto / Brutus (Enrico Guazzoni, 1911), follow the plot of the play, even if in a reduced version.

Returning safe and sound from his expeditions, Caesar is flattered by Mark Antony’s plan to crown him emperor. Yet, Brutus, Caesar’s illegitimate son and a stark Republican, abhors this idea. He allies with the Republicans, led by Cassius, to kill Caesar. Despite pleas and warnings by his mistress and a priest, Caesar does go the Senate and is brutally killed there by his son ("Et tu, Brute"). Mark Antony arouses the populace against the killers, who flee the city, followed by an angry mob. At the Battle of Philippi, Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus, accusing him of the murder. Together with the defeat of his army and Cassius' suicide, this is too much for Brutus, who also commits suicide.

In Italy, Shakespeare’s play was hardly performed in the early twentieth century. A rare performance was given at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 19 December 1905 by the Compagnia Stabile. While initially praised by the Turin-based daily La Stampa in December 1905, in an article defending the play against its unpopularity in Italy opposite other plays by the Bard. However, in 1906, the same newspaper heavily criticised the staging and the performance of the play, both considered ‘mediocre’. Apart from the performance in Rome in 1905, no staging of 'Julius Caesar' took place in Turin before Itala made its film.

Abroad, there were a few examples to be inspired by. Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged 'Julius Caesar' on 22 January 1898 at the newly-built His Majesty’s at the Haymarket. He played Mark Antony, Charles Fulton was Julius Caesar and Lewis Waller Brutus. While 'Julius Caesar' had been more popular in the early rather than the late 19th century in Britain, Beerbohm Tree’s version was an enormous success, not in the least because of the collaboration of the Anglo-Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who designed the sets and costumes for the play, and was renowned for his well-researched depiction of Roman Antiquity. In 1900, two years after it opened, Tree boasted that already 242.000 people had seen his staging of 'Julius Caesar'.

Another foreign success was the staging of 'Julius Caesar' in Paris, at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, where from 4 December 1906, a translation and re-elaboration of Shakespeare’s play could be seen and heard, with Edmond Duquesne as Caesar, Maxime Desjardins as Brutus, Philippe Garnier as Cassius, and Édouard de Max as Mark Antony. Lucien Jusseaume had designed the sets, while music by Gustave Doret was added, conducted by Émile Bretonneau. The play was well publicised, including by a large set of postcards, showing the various acts of the play - a common use for the Parisian stage by the early 1900s.


British postcard by Rotary Photo, E.C., 105 K. Photo: Lizzie Caswall Smith. Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Julius Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's play 'Caesar and Cleopatra' (1899).


Russian postcard. Vasily Kachalov as Julius Caesar and Alexander Vishnevsky as Mark Antony in Shakespeare's play 'Julius Caesar', staged in 1903 at the Moscow Art Theater and directed by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.


British postcard in the Wrench Series, no. 997. Photo: Biograph Studio, mailed 1902. Lewis Waller as Brutus in the play 'Julius Caesar' by William Shakespeare, a role which he first performed in 1898 at the Haymarket Theatre, opposite Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Mark Antony.


British postcard by Rotary Photo E.C. 106R. Photo: Burford. Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Mark Antony in William Shakespeare's play 'Antony and Cleopatra'. In 1906, Beerbohm Tree's extravagant revival of 'Antony and Cleopatra' opened at His Majesty's Theatre, with Tree as Mark Antony and Constance Collier as Cleopatra. Tree already had played Mark Antony in a version of Shakespeare's play 'Julius Caesar', first performed in 1898 at Her Majesty's Theatre, with Tree as Mark Anthony, Lewis Waller as Brutus, Charles Fulton as Caesar, Evelyn Millard as Portia (Brutus' wife), and Lily Hanbury as Calpurnia (Caesar's wife).


French postcard by Collection Photo-Programme, Paris. 'Jules César' (Julius Caesar) by William Shakespeare, performed at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris. First night at 4-12-1906. Translated and reworking of Shakespeare by Louis de Gramont. 6th Tableau. The Senate. Julius Caesar listens to the supplications by Cassius, and Brutus.... Edmond Duquesne played Caesar, Maxime Desjardins Brutus, Philippe Garnier Cassius, Édouard de Max Mark Antony, Ballot Pindarus, and Madeleine Barjac Calpurnia. Scenes by Lucien Jusseaume, and music by Gustave Doret.


French postcard in the Nos artistes dans leur loge series, no. 133. Photo: Comoedia. Maxime Desjardins .

Pictorial appropriations
It is worthwhile to investigate Giovanni Pastrone's pictorial appropriations in Giulio Cesare (Itala, 1909). The assassination of Caesar in the Senate is a key moment in the film. The violent act and the frenzy of the killers were already well expressed in a painting quite close to the moment in the film, namely in 'La Curée / L'assassinat de César' (1887, Grenoble, Musée des Beaux-Arts) by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse. Yet, the background in Rochegrosse’s canvas is much vaster in its dimensions and ambitions.

While considering the depiction of Caesar’s death in 19th-century painting, one of the most famous examples is Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 'Mort de César / Death of Caesar' (1867, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). Yet, this painting rather shows the moment after, when the assassinating senators leave the Senate and the corpse of Caesar, the face covered, is left beneath the statue of Pompey. The space is covered in darkness, with light on the killers, seen on he back, denying us their emotions. It is exactly this painting, proliferating through endless reproductions, that would be used as a citation in the American film Julius Caesar (J. Stuart Blackton, 1908), produced by The Vitagraph Co. of America one year before the Itala production. Two years after the Itala film, Enrico Guazzoni would cite the painting again in his short film Bruto / Brutus (Cines, 1911), which also closely follows the Shakespeare play, and also quotes a painting, Prospero Piatti's 'I funerali di Cesare' (1898, Museo Nacional de las Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile).

In 1914, Enrico Guazzoni was strengthened by the experience of the direction of his recent feature-length epics Quo vadis? (1913) and Marcantonio e Cleopatra (1913). He asked Raffaele Giovagnoli, author of the novels 'Spartaco' (1874) and 'Messalina' (1885), to write a script that mixed Shakespeare's play with Ancient sources such as Plutarchus' 'Vitae' and Caesar's own 'Comments' into a vast enterprise with enormous sets and countless extras. The film starts with the secret affair between a young Caesar and the pretty Servilia, who yet belongs to the austere patrician family of Cato, who forbid the affair. The couple secretly marries, and after Caesar's flight because of dictator Sulla, Servilia is forced to marry Brutus Sr., to whom she has to confess on her wedding night that she is pregnant with Caesar's child. The child will not know who is real father is.

Years after, Caesar gloriously returns after the Civil War is over and becomes a powerful army general, leading the wars in Gaul and conquering Vercingetorix. Yet, the senators started to fear his power and wealth. The plot then follows the Shakespearean play with the attempts to crown Caesar emperor, the warnings in vain, the assassination in the Senate, and Mark Antony's call to the people to take revenge on the assassins, while Servilia tells Brutus he has killed his father. The surviving print lacks an episode with Cleopatra, played by Pina Menichelli , while Amleto Novelli, the hero of Guazzoni's previous epics, once more played the lead. The existing film print, despite its great tinting and toning colouring, unfortunately suffers from an overabundance of intertitles, while only in the assassination scene, just like in the arena scene in Quo Vadis?, we encounter a rare moment of analytical editing instead of a tableau-style kind of filming (one shot one set).

In the sound era, the life and death of Julius Caesar was depicted in films on the relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra such as Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934), Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1945), Carry On, Cleo (Gerald Thomas, 1964), and the various Asterix-films, while more related to the Shakespeare play was Julius Caesar (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1953) starring Louis Calhern as Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony and James Mason as Brutus. Several other Shakespeare adaptations followed, such as the 1969/1970 version by Stuart Burge, with Charlton Heston , Jason Robards and John Gielgud as Mark Antony, Brutus and Caesar. A remarkable variation was Cesare deve morire / Caesar Must Die (2012) by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, in which the real inmates of the Rebibbia prison in Rome stage the Shakespearian play. The film won the Golden Bear in Berlin.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Paramount. Warren William as Julius Caesar and Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934).


Dutch postcard by HEMO. Photo: Eagle Lion. Claude Rains in Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1945).


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 555. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Marlon Brando as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953). .


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7142. Photo: Universal International. John Gavin as Julius Caesar in Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960).


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2655. Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar and Amanda Barrie as Cleopatra in Carry On Cleo (Gerald Thomas, 1964), released in the GDR as Cleo, Liebe und Antike. It was the tenth in the series of the 31 Carry On films, produced by Peter Rogers and distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated.


Small French postcard by McCann Communications, Nanterre, offered by AGFA. Photo: Etienne George / Renn Productions. Roberto Benigni , Gottfried John as Julius Caesar and Jean-Pierre Castaldi in Astérix & Obélix contre César/Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar (Claude Zidi, 1999).

Sources: Ivo Blom (Quo vadis. Cabiria and the 'Archaeologists', 2003), research project Museum of Dream Worlds, Wikipedia (English and Italian), and IMDb.

Ross Verlag, Part 29: Bunte Filmbilder

Ross Verlag published several series of cigarette cards, which were much smaller than the famous Ross postcards. These cards (app. 7 x 5,5 cm or 28 x 22, 5 inches) were sold in packs or cartons of cigarettes in Germany and a few other countries. One of the series was called Bunte Filmbilder (Colourful Film Pictures) of which we know two series with both Hollywood and European stars. The cards have numbers on the back and were meant to be pasted into a book. The book for the second series was published in 1936. Some pictures were duplicates of photos seen on postcards, but others were designed just for the cigarette cards, which were printed for different tobacco brands.With twenty of these wonderful and indeed colourful film pictures, EFSP finishes our Ross Verlag Tribute.


Theo Lingen . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Martin Brinkmann A.G., Bremen, no. 53. Photo: Projektograph-Film. Theo Lingen in Wer zuletzt küßt… / Who Kisses Last... (E.W. Emo, 1936).


Hans Albers . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for G. Zuban, München, no. 115. Photo: Ufa.


Weiss Ferdl. German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling AG, no. 152. Photo: Majestic-Syndikat-Film.


Heinrich George . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for G. Zuban, München, no. 190. Photo: Badal / Terra. Heinrich George in Stjenka Rasin/Stenka Rasin (Alexandre Volkoff, 1936).


Fredric March . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Lloyd Zigaretten, no. 212. Photo: Paramount. Fredric March in The Eagle and the Hawk (Stuart Walker, 1933).


Carole Lombard . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greilingen-Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 259. Photo: Paramount.


Else Elster . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Caid Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 323. Photo: Schulz and Wuellner.


Genia Nikolaieva . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling-Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 358. Photo: Ufa.


Heinz Rühmann and Theo Lingen . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Drama Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 360. Photo: Projectograph-Film.


Rochelle Hudson . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Lloyd Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 374. Photo: Fox-Film.


Geraldine Katt . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling-Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 383. Photo: Bavaria. Geraldine Katt in Die Stimme des Herzens/The Voice of the Heart (Karl Heinz Martin, 1937).


Annabella . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling-Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 384. Photo: New World Pictures.


Hilde von Stolz . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Caid, Series 2, no. 394. Photo: Bavaria.


Camilla Horn . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Cigarettenfabrik Caid, Series 2, no. 402. Photo: Bavaria. Camilla Horn in Sein letztes Modell/His Last Model (Rudolf van der Noss, 1937).


Luis Trenker . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 403. Photo: Trenker / Tobis / Rota.


Hans Richter . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Drama Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 459. Photo: Cando-Film.


Albrecht Schoenhals . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greilingen Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 465. Photo: Deka-Syndikat-Film.


Elizabeth Allan . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Greiling-Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 484. Photo: Styria-Film.


Hans Holt . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Caid, Series no. 2, no. 491. Photo: Styria-Film. Hans Holt in Lumpacivagabundus/Lumpaci the Vagabond (Géza von Bolváry, 1936).


Shirley Temple . German collector card by Ross Verlag in the Bunte Filmbilder series for Caid, Series no. 2, no. 496. Photo: Fox-Film.

Source: Mark Goffee (Ross Verlag Movie Star Postcards). This was the last post in our Ross Verlag Tribute!