New York: Film-makers' Cinematheque, 1966. Original film program for the 1966 screening of six Kenneth Anger films, being shown on the Spring Equinox (March 21, 1966). Screened at Jonas Mekas' Film-maker's Cinematheque coopperative theater, then located at 125 West 41st Street in New York. Films at the screening included "Kustom Kar Kommandos," "Fireworks," "Scorpio Rising," "Eaux d'artifice," and a prelude...

Paris: Editions Lajeunesse, 1960. Original French program for the "30th Gala of the Union of Artists," here under the original French title. A lavish illustrated magazine bound in red faux suede with gilt embossed titles, featuring full-page color advertisements for motor car companies, cosmetics, alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, galleries, and florists, and event programs, produced to coincide with the gala...

New York: Shubert Theatre, circa 1955. Original souvenir play program for the 1953 musical "Can-Can" composed by Cole Porter. This program likely from the mid-1950s touring company production of the play, starring Rita Dimitri, John Tyers, and Ronnie Cunningham. A self righteous judge threatens to shut down a Can-Can dance hall, but finds more trouble than he expected when he...

London: Ealing Studios, 1947. Original British program for the 1947 film. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, and starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Sally Ann Howes. This Dickens adaptation has gone down in critical history as being truly one of the most Dickensian, with a dark mood and attention to the author's lowdown characters throughout. A colorful program, with...

Beverly Hills, CA: United Artists, 1952. Original US program for the 1952 film. Autobiographically reflective of Chaplin's fears of being left behind in the fading vaudeville and silent film era, "Limelight" depicts the final years of a washed up stage clown who briefly maintains an impossible relationship with a young dancer, representative of a new generation of performers. The first...

Paris: Franco London Films, 1952. Original French program for the 1953 film, starring Gina Lollobrigida. A typically artful Rene Clair production, which like the director's earlier "Le Silence est d'Or" presents a highly stylized (and lushly romanticized) vision of a bygone France. A young composer, bored and irritated with the world of the present, gives himself over completely to daydreams...

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1974. Original Japanese program for the US film "The Great Gatsby." Full color wrappers, with black and white text and black and white and full color photos throughout. Text in Japanese. The 1974 adaptation of Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel has been praised for its lavish costumes and decadent set design. Coupled with an all star cast and...

Paris: Various, 1946-1964. Collection of 19 original French programs for French, German, Italian, and Spanish films, with a single US film, here under the original French titles, 1946-1964. All feature color wrappers, some illustrated with color stills from the film, and highlights include "Madame du Barry" (1954, Christian-Jaque), "Madame Butterfly" (1954, Carmine Gallone), "Les Diaboliques" (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot), US film...

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1933. Original American program for the 1933 film, with an original illustration by Hirschfeld and a striking photo of Jean Harlow on the front wrapper. Rarely in the 1930s was such excellent source material successfully combined with such stellar screenwriting, directing, and acting talent. Today the film plays equally well as both comedy and drama...

Rome: Albert and Charles Boni, 1951. Original Italian program for the 1951 film, based on the novel "Toto il buono" by Cesare Zavattini. SIGNED by De Sica at the bottom of the title page. One of the director's classics, pure visual storytelling, made just after "Bicycle Thieves" (1948) and just before "Umberto D." (1952). A gorgeous, oversize program with a....

Hollywood: Paramount Pictures, 1933. Original film program for the 1933 film. With a striking image of Dietrich on the front wrapper, and much detail throughout regarding the production. Based on the novel by Hermann Suermann and the play by Edward Sheldon, about a country orphan who goes to Berlin to live with her aunt and who becomes the model for...

Copenhagen: Danish Government Film Foundation, 1964. Original promotional program about Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, published by the Danish government to promote his work. With an essay on Dreyer's life and work by the then-director of the Danish Filmmuseum, and photo-illustrations from each of Dreyer's 14 feature films. Text in English. 12 x 8 inches (30 x 20 cm) in...

Berlin: Universum Film [UFA] / L'Alliance Cinematographique Europeenne, 1938. Original French program for the French and German film "Un fichu metier." Three-color wrappers, with black and white photos and color text headers throughout. Text in French. A comedy in which a wayward crown prince is causing trouble for his kingdom (Vodenia), so a minister decides to replace him with a....

Sacramento, CA: California Arts Commision, 1971. First Edition. Original program published to coincide with the California Arts Commission's (partnering with the American Film Institute) release of Peter Bogdanovich's film, "Directed by John Ford." Black-and-white photographs throughout, including many stills from Ford films, and essays on the AFI and the California Arts Commison. 7 x 10 inches, saddle-stitched, plain white wrappers...

Rome, Italy: Produzione Gallone / Filmsonor, 1951. Original souvenir program, printed in Italy, for the 1951 Italian-French-Spanish film. These programs saw popularity beginning in the 1960s and continued to be produced until the early 1980s and the ever-growing VHS market, with a particularly high distribution in Asian countries. This example features several full-color illustrations of Roman warriors and women, and...

Russia: Mezhrabpom-Rus, 1927. Vintage German program for the 1926 Russian silent film. Photo-illustrated throughout. The only cinema paper dating from the decade of release we have encountered for the film. Based on the 1906 novel by Maxim Gorky, about a woman's struggle to free her son from a Czarist prison camp during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The first film...

Glendale, CA: Allied Artists, 1975. Original program for the US release of the 1975 film, based on Anne Desclos' pseudonymously published 1954 novel. A classic tale of dominance and submission, a woman's lover takes her to a chateau where she is trained to be a sex slave in order to please him. Originally written as an attempt to write the...

Prague: Barrandov, 1965. Original program for the 1965 Czechoslovak new wave film, with text in both French and English, made for the international release of the film. Illustrated throughout with both still images from the film and impressionistic illustrations. The end of WWII from the perspective on a boy in a rural farming village, equally worried about retreating German soldiers...

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1968. Archive including 20 vintage linen-backed production photographs, a trade advertisement, a film program, and a souvenir booklet from the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." From the collection of NASA scientific consultant Frederick I. Ordway III, with images prominently featuring Ordway, production designer Harry Lange, Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, and others. One photograph...

London: Wardour Films / Universum Film [UFA], 1927. Original program for the London premiere of the film on March 21st, 1927 at the Marble Arch Pavilion, preceded in English by the US release earlier that month but with different title cards. Director Lang's expressionist masterpiece, based on the novel and written for the screen by then-wife von Harbou, one of...

Berlin: Film-Kurier, 1924. Original German programs for duology "Die Nibelungen," one each for "Die Nibelungen: Siegfried" and "Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge." Based on the thirteenth century epic poem "Nibelungenlied." Text in German. Film-Kurier was the first German film journal, published daily beginning in 1919. Film-Kurier's classic era lasted until 1933, when its publisher, Alfred Weiner, had to flee Germany because...

Vienna: Illustrierter Film-Kurier, 1931. Vintage Austrian program for the 1931 German film. Lang's first sound film, Peter Lorre's breakthrough role, and the film Lang considered to be his masterpiece—an assertion that has found much agreement since. The only second piece of ephemera from the film we have ever offered. Text in German. Issue No. 262 of "Illustrierter Film-Kurier," one of...

London: Maurice Cowan / Rank Productions, 1958. Original program for the 1958 UK film. Illustrated throughout with both black and white and color stills from the film, as well as reproductions of watercolor illustrations showing scenes from the film. 8.25 x 11.75 inches (21 x 30 cm). 10 pages. Very Good plus in saddle stitched wrappers. Lightly soiled overall, with...

Paris: Nouvelles editions de films, 1963. Vintage Program for the international release of the 1963 film, here under the alternate title "The Will-O-The-Whisp," a perhaps more literal translation of the original French title "Le feu follet." The film would be released as "The Fire Within" in the US and "A Time to Live and a Time to Die" in the...

California: Art Theatre Guild / Eve Productions, 1964. Original black-and-white program for the 1964 film, printed for the Art Theatre Guild. The Art Theatre Guild (ATG) began in 1961 as an independent agency distributing films (mostly Japanese) rejected by major studios. The company operated until the 1980s, with theatres in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio...

London: National Film Theatre, 1957-1963. Collection of 29 monthly film programs from the London National Film Theatre, dating between 1957 and 1963. A large collection of programs from the early days of Britain's leading repertory cinema, including critical essays, synopses, and film schedules for varying seasons at the theatre, each program generally comprising a period of between one and three...

New York: Cinema 5, Circa 1972. Original American program for the 1969 French documentary film. A two-part film exploring collaboration and resistance to the Vichy government and Nazi Germany in the French town of Clermont-Ferrand. Nominated for an Academy Awards for Best Documentary. 7.5 x 11 inches (19 x 28 cm), in self wrappers. Printed on newsprint. Near Fine with...

London: The Archers / Eagle-Lion, 1946. Original UK Program for the 1946 film, released in the US as "Stairway to Heaven." SIGNED by director Michael Powell on page 12, just above the photo next to his biographical sketch. While it is certainly arguable that the greatest Powell-Pressburger film is a 10-way tie for first place, "A Matter of Life and...

Paris: Franco London Film S.A, 1956. Original program for the 1956 English language release of the 1955 French-Italian film. Deluxe program in English text, illustrated throughout in black-and-white stills from the film, detailing the film synopsis. Also includes 8 full-color borderless film stills, akin to lobby cards, a brief filmography of director Renoir and transcript of an interview between Renoir...

Paris: Gaumont, 1961. Original program for the 1961 French film, here under the original French title. Illustrated in red, black, and white, and stills from the film, with laid-in synopsis sheets featuring the "Fenouillard" family and oversize umbrella illustration on the rectos. Based on the 19th century French comic by Marie Louis Georges Colomb (Christophe), one of the earliest in...

London: Russflix / MGM, 1971. Original full-color film program for the 1971 film "The Boy Friend." Though not noted in any way, this copy belonged to screenwriter, director, and film ephemera collector Leonard Schrader. Hal Erickson: "The Boy Friend" began life as Sandy Wilson's small-scale pastiche of British musical comedies of the 1920s. When the play was brought to America...

Universal City, CA: Universal Pictures, 1956. Vintage French film program from the 1956 US film. Based on Robert Wilder's 1946 novel of the same name. Based on the 1945 novel by Robert Wilder, itself a fictionalized account of a real-life scandal involving torch singer Libby Holman and her husband, Zachary Smith Reynolds, heir to a tobacco fortune. A rich playboy...

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1970. Original Program for the 1970 film. Black comedy from the early New Hollywood era, a revisionist Western wherein Keach travels and executes the low-down at one hundred dollars a head. The third of Keach's films, and second starring role. 4 pages, folded, 8.5 x 11 inches. Near Fine, with a hint of rubbing at the fold.

France: Balcazar Producciones Cinematograficas / Four Star Television, 1965. Original Program for the 1965 French film. Italy's answer to the James Bond saga, this is the first of Giorgio (George) Ardisson's spy thrillers, two notables being "Agent 3/S3: Massacre in the Sun" (1966) and "Countdown to Doomsday" (1966). Two pages (front and back), 9.5 x 12.25 inches. Very Good plus, with creasing to one corner.

Paris: Cady Films, 1949. Original French program for the 1949 Jacques Tati film, "Jour de Fete," the director's first feature-length movie, about a day in the life of a rural French postman, illustrated throughout in color by Rene Peron. Rather than being a typical program with biographies, photographs, film stills, and essays, Tati's approach is to introduce the film's cast...

Hollywood: RKO Radio Pictures / Winkler and Ramen, 1941. Original American program for Welles' 1941 masterpiece, "Citizen Kane," sold only at the 1941 first-run screenings of the film in the United States. The program begins with references to Welles' then-well-known productions of Shakespeare with the Mercury Theatre, followed by a guide to the making of "Citizen Kane," a full production...