Gene Arnold, owner of MoviePosters.com, began collecting movie
posters as a hobby in 1965. He was attending a comic book convention
in Dallas that summer, when a young man wandered into the Hotel Convention
room passing out free
lobby cards.
Gene remembers that young man, Corky Duncan, giving
him a "Fighting 69th" lobby card and handing him his business card from
"Duncan Poster Exchange."
He followed Corky a couple of blocks away to an old building in downtown
Dallas.
On the second floor there were six rooms filled
to the rafters with movie posters, lobby cards and stills. The posters
were so little thought of, at that time, that they would fall to the
floor from the overflowing shelves and no one bothered to pick them
up. Instead, they were simply stepped upon and, when damaged, thrown
into the trash cans.
All posters were 50 cents each and all lobby cards
were 25 cents each, regardless of title. Gene bought $5 worth of posters
that day and he was hooked. He'd return to Dallas every few months and
buy more and more, until the exchange closed it's doors.
After years of collecting, he turned his hobby
into a business.
After purchasing "Film Favorites" in Canton,
Oklahoma, he decided to move the business to Houston in 1993. He changed
the name to "Arnold Movie Poster Company" and then a few years later
to "MoviePosters.com" as the internet came along.
The business is now in Tomball, Texas, just outside
of Houston. Gene's son, Mark, and Son-in-Law, Rob Gasper work with him.
They have their hands full as they sell, across the U.S.A. and around
the world, thousands of original movie posters and reprints of classic
titles.