The Lavender Hill Mob

Artist: Ronald Searle
Format: UK Quad (30"x 40")
Condition: Excellent
Year: 1959

Description
Poster for one of the best loved of all British Comedy films. "The Lavender Hill Mob" was produced by Ealing Studios in 1951 & starred Alec Guinness & Stanley Holloway (shown here on the poster) with a host of British comic talent: Sid James, Alfie Bass etc. The poster here is for a later 1950's release. Back in the 1950's-70's, films were frequently re-released after their initial outings. Sometimes, two films were combined together as double-bill releases. Invariably, the distributors would use existing poster artwork but budgets for re-releases were meagre & so the artwork would be pared down & often printed with a limited colour range in order to keep costs down. For the purpose of comparison, we show an example of the original UK Quad poster showing the full S John Woods/Ronald Searle artwork but on the re-release, only the photographic image of the two leads survives. Searle was responsible for the cartoon illustrations in the background & of course, became famous for his illustrations for the "St Trinians" cartoons & film posters too. S John Woods was head of marketing at Ealing Studios from 1943-59 & during his time there, he was responsible for designing posters such as this & employing some of the best graphic designers to illustrate posters for Ealing. The poster here has been cleaned, de-acidified & linen-backed.