Original Vintage Movie Film Theater poster film noir lobby card memorabilia collectibles For Sale
"This Gun for Hire", 1942
Original Vintage Lobby Card Movie Poster (11x14")
Starring Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd
An immensely popular film and even more desirable nostalgia treasure. The value of Original material is simply SKYROCKETING. The one sheet sold in 2015 at a major auction for over $45,000! This would be the film to catapult Alan Ladd to super stardom...
Very rare and difficult to find , this beautiful lobby card features it's main stars. Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd with his famous "gun" (that was For Hire)... One of the film’s great dramatic scenes. Only the 2nd lobby card we have ever acquired from the Original release of this film. * See enlargeable image above...
Very Good-Excellent condition with pinholes on border corners.
This Gun for Hire (Paramount, 1942). Lobby Card (11" X 14"). Film Noir.
Starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Alan Ladd, Tully Marshall, and Marc Lawrence. Directed by Frank Tuttle. An unrestored lobby card with good color and an overall very presentable appearance.
This is a great, compelling crime thriller that stands the test of time quite well. This would be one of the first movies I'd choose to show to a fan of recent movies who wants to explore classic thrillers but doesn't know where to start (along with "The Maltese Falcon" and one or two others). While many period pieces are "appreciated", this one still provides a jolt of adrenaline right from the opening scene, when Alan Ladd rips the maid's dress and slaps her. He's a bad man, no doubt about it, and his portrayal throughout most of the movie is surprisingly dark, even by today's standards. His character, Raven, is a man whose sole act of human compassion is not to murder a crippled orphan in cold blood, and Ladd's performance is underplayed just enough to make him chillingly believable.
This is a relatively early feature in the cycle that would later be called "film noir". A few films had begun to establish the new look and feel for the new generation of gangster movies, but the archetypal noirs were still a couple of years off. This movie is an interesting example of the early style because it visits the typical noir territory (culturally and emotionally) but avoids the stereotypical noir cast of characters. Rather than a flawed, weak man and a femme fatale, "This Gun For Hire" gives us a coldly amoral killer as the male lead and a tough, streetwise woman as the main "good guy" (her cop boyfriend spends most of the film running around frantically and accomplishing nothing).
Visually, this film is pure noir. It's directed by Frank Tuttle, who made the first version of "The Glass Key" in 1935, combining a hard-boiled gangster story and expressionist-influenced lighting. "This Gun For Hire" fits firmly into that mode, and shows that many of the stylistic trademarks of the supposedly "post-war" Noir style were firmly in place before the US had even been in WW2 for a full year. More importantly, it provides thrills, and a great dose of "the good stuff" in a neat, 81-minute-long package.
