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Original cinema display board. 182 x 102 cm., central photomontage of 5 b&w photographs, shaped, tinted and in white borders, with a circular yellow text box with titles in black and two other captions in white on a grey background within a white box, with black borders and titles in green, accented with white on the upper border, yellow in the bottom and red on the other two, painted by hand and/or coloured stencil, on thick white card. N.p. [USA], n.p. [Jay-Dee-Kay Productions], n.d., c.1936. £1,500.00 A trifle bowed, the corners a bit rubbed. Nourmand & Marsh, illustrated p-102, lot 113, Christie's sale 5733, Exploitation Poster Art: The Tony Nourmand Collection. Probably unique, in the last few decades there's been a sort of sea change in the appreciation and collecting of twentieth century, analogue commercial art such as this beautiful, heavily patinated artisanal piece of realia with great wabi-sabi. Provenance: Tony Nourmand collection purchased at Christie's by Maggs for The LSD Library, the Salle de Bibliothe?que. When this film was released in 1936, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called for ''.a nationwide drive to crush white slavery'' [quoted p- 259 Eric Schaefer ? 'Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!': A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, 1999). At the same time, Nourmand and Marsh note that a run of films were cashing in on the heavily reported court case of the New York prostitution racketeer Salvatore Lucania aka Charles Luciano known as ?Lucky Luciano '. The film ? Gambling With Souls ', for which this board was made, was one of those based upon the Lucky Luciano case and came out in the same year that the mobster was up in court (p-100 ibid). As with the printed poster for ?Vice Racket' , it is much more gritty and sensationalist than the one distributed under the actual film title '.which suggests a light and romantic, if mildly titillating, flick' (op cit). Slogans on the board declare 'School Girls Sold to Vice' and 'Parents should see this picture showing the shocking crimes against American Woman Hood [sic] ' accompanying noirish photos of olive skinned mafia men wielding guns or with hands in suit pockets implying gun violence. The plot revolves around young women who enter debt bondage through gambling and are sold, sexually exploited and extorted by ?Lucky' Wilder (played by heavily typecast ?career-criminal' Wheeler Oakman). A classic titillating, tabloid plotline by writer J.D. Kendis. 233436 NOTE THIS IS A VERY LARGE ITEM AND SHIPPING CHARGES WILL BE APPLIED AFTER PURCHASE.
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