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British Film Posters

Double Crown Poster

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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