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.
