The Double Crown measured 20x30 and has
been used off and on over the years. Double Crowns were some of the earlier
posters issued and the name taken directly from the paper suppliers.
Because the Crown
poster is rarely used, the double crown was the smallest poster issued
and almost all other posters were a multiple in size, some collectors and
some in the industry have called these UK one sheets.
Double Crowns were bought in quantity by
the theaters and used to distribute around the community in shops and put
up in well populate areas such as bus and train stations. Double Crowns
were usually only printed by the studio for SOME major films. Other times
the studio, quite often, would make cheaper one or two colour versions available
in what was called a letterpress poster.
NOTICE: here is an ad that was in a 1939
British pressbook for theater managers to purchase. The pressbook was sent
out just before the war and the paper shortages:
In
the last few decades, the letterpress versions seem to have disappeared
and the studio printed versions have remained. Even though there has been
some unusual promotions with the Double Crown...
NOTICE: The thunderball teaser poster on
the left was taken out of the Thunderball pressbook. 2 different Quads were
issued, the teaser (shown here) and the regular.
BUT there were no Double Crown's sold to
theater in the promotions. Instead the pressbook gives instructions to the
theater manager to 'CUT' the teaser poster into pieces to make a variety
of Double Crowns and shows 6 different Double Crown posters that can be
made from cutting the teaser poster. NOTICE the clip taken from the pressbook:
Since you could only make 2 with a teaser
poster, I guess the idea was to sell multiple teaser posters to the theater
manager. I don't think this promotion was very successful.
COLLECTOR'S NOTICE: There is also another
issue that has to be considered.
Quite
often, major films got plenty of advertising material in the major
cities, but when it went to the theaters in the rural areas, distributors
would sometimes wait and issue combo posters instead
to save on the advertising budget.
Theater managers that only want to show
one of the features would quite often 'cut' the combo poster in half to
advertise the one that they were showing. For collectors, this creates a
very unusual situation.
A lot of the combo posters are not evenly
divided and are easy to spot, others ARE evenly divided but the promotional
wording doesn't make sense..... like the poster on the left. BUT there are
some that are evenly divided and worded that really make it tough to tell
the difference, like the one on the right.
In the collectors world, an original issue
is ALWAYS worth more than it's combo counter part. So, even though they
are studio issued, they are cut versions of combos and not the original
crown releases.
Here's a look at the Double
Crown posters in our archive
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