Frankenstein stills

[timelessmoviemagic]

Hi all,

Some of you may know I was offered a serious collection of Universal stills early last year. I purchased these and I have started sorting them out. A number of stills have already sold but I still have a number of them to go through.

Now I need your advice, first here is a little background.

All the stills I have gone through so far have been from the date range of 1934-1940 (Son of Frankie, Dracula's Daughter, Black Friday, Will Hay stills etc) and I have now stumbled across some Frankenstein stills. There are no dates on them but given that the others are from around that date could these be original?

I had a quick look on Emovie and they have a few of them on there. Some have been sold as 1931's and a couple as 47 releases, (the 47s has the date on them)
All the other stills I have are British release stills. (Not sure if Frankie was re-released in the UK or not)

Some of them have the still code 310-1-58 and similar on

Anyway here are just some of them, thoughts on these anyone?
Thanks
Marc

[erik1925]

Wow. Nice stills/imagery, Marc.

A couple things that caught my eye right off the bat. The apparent, brilliant whiteness of the photo paper, for being over 85 years old (if from the first release). Or maybe its just how it appears in the photo? And the wider, bottom border is curious to me, too, unless photos printed in the UK were often done this way?

[timelessmoviemagic]

Hi Jeff,

I have just had a look at the colour of the borders again and they aren't really that white if you get what I mean. The paper they are printed on definitely is the feel of 30s-40s stills.

You may be on to something with the thicker white border though. Looking on Bruce's he has that thicker white border style as a '51 release by Realart.

One other thing to note though is that all the other stills I have which have writing on them have a thicker white border and they are definitely original so this style border was definitely around in those days in the UK.

I wonder if any Universal expert will know any release dates for Frankie in the UK and if there were more than one.

I do know Dracula AND Frankie were released as a double bill in 1938.

[erik1925]

Thanks for the info, Marc. 

[MoviePosterBid.com]

definitely re-issue stills of uncertain release.

[paul waines]

Frankenstein was re-relessed in the UK in the late 50's and again in the 60's.  The stills you have, have no credits info on them, so they are most likely to have been put out by a seller who sold  stills, and not a studio or distributor. I have some from various years, and sources, looking at the ones you have posted, they could be 70's, possibly even 80's.  Do you have a photo of the backs?

[BruceH]

Frankenstein was re-relessed in the UK in the late 50's and again in the 60's.  The stills you have, have no credits info on them, so they are most likely to have been put out by a seller who sold  stills, and not a studio or distributor. I have some from various years, and sources, looking at the ones you have posted, they could be 70's, possibly even 80's.  Do you have a photo of the backs?

I agree completely with this. Dealer made repros seem far more likely that any studio re-release.

[timelessmoviemagic]

I definitely believe these are re-release but I am 99.99999% certain they aren't 60's, 70's or 80's re-releases or repros.

Reason for this is where i got all the other 240 stills from and the date of those.  As mentioned before all the other stills came from London and the person's grandfather was a runner for a film company in the 1930's and 40's. The original owner wasn't a dealer, had no other film memorabilia other than these stills that he rescued when they were about to be thrown away in the skip at Wardour Street. Bear in mind he worked in Wardour street which was the centre of the film Industry and all the big companies had their headquarters situated there.

I have come across some stills of another film which was dated 1951 so the time span I now have from all the stills is 1933-1951. So it is now likely the original owners career extended into the 50's.

One of the stills on the back has pencil writing on which has the numbers 55398.

I'll see if I can contact the person again and ask if he has anymore information on where his grandfather worked.

It is possible they are '51 releases like this from Bruce's site. http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/5279352.html

 This has no writing on either. Bruce how did you know this was a '51 release if you don't mind me asking?

[erik1925]

After your initial post, Marc, I also went and looked at the EMP database to cross reference and look for any additional details.

What I also found is that a number of stills similar to yours were sold (blank borders with no identifying info on either the front or back) but were described as 1951RR stills put out by Realart. I wonder how that fact was also determined or learned, as in theory, yours could also be Realart RR images, too. Some have writing or some address labels on the back, but nothing that reads Realart specifically. Or maybe there is some small Realart identifier on these stills that I'm not seeing?

These are the 3 that caught my eye:

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/6891536.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/7017998.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/15651314.html

[MoviePosterBid.com]

After your initial post, Marc, I also went and looked at the EMP database to cross reference and look for any additional details.

What I also found is that a number of stills similar to yours were sold (blank borders with no identifying info on either the front or back) but were described as 1951RR stills put out by Realart. I wonder how that fact was also determined or learned, as in theory, yours could also be Realart RR images, too. Some have writing or some address labels on the back, but nothing that reads Realart specifically. Or maybe there is some small Realart identifier on these stills that I'm not seeing?

These are the 3 that caught my eye:

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/6891536.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/7017998.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/15651314.html

third one has a date stamp of 1974 on back

[paul waines]

The problem with stills is unlike Lobby cards, or F.O.H. Stills, which are produced when the film goes on release, is they can be printed anytime, and by anyone, even people not in the film industry. The paper they are printed on could be a good guide, eg kodak, agfa, etc...

[jayn_j]

The problem with stills is unlike Lobby cards, or F.O.H. Stills, which are produced when the film goes on release, is they can be printed anytime, and by anyone, even people not in the film industry. The paper they are printed on could be a good guide, eg kodak, agfa, etc...

Even more than that.

The type of paper changed several times over the years.  The biggest change came around 1978 when Kodak moved from paper based backing to a plastic backing.  You can easily tell this because the paper has a rough cardboard feel and the plastic is smooth.  Also the image has brighter whites.

Original stills until the 80s were always glossy finish.  This was because the primary use was newspaper promotion and the litho process demanded a glossy print.  If it is matte, semi-matte or pearl finished, it is likely a repro.

[timelessmoviemagic]

Agreed Paul & Jay,

These stills feel no different to the paper on the other 240 stills I have which are dated from 33 to 51. I'm still hoping to hear from the gentleman to see if he can shed any more light on his grandfather.

However my gut feeling initially was that these were '51 releases but I didn't know if Frankie was released that year in the UK. However as Jeff mentioned Realart released Frankie in 51 in America.

So I'm leaning more towards them being '51 Frankie stills.

More detective work needed on this.

[MoviePosterBid.com]

After your initial post, Marc, I also went and looked at the EMP database to cross reference and look for any additional details.

What I also found is that a number of stills similar to yours were sold (blank borders with no identifying info on either the front or back) but were described as 1951RR stills put out by Realart. I wonder how that fact was also determined or learned, as in theory, yours could also be Realart RR images, too. Some have writing or some address labels on the back, but nothing that reads Realart specifically. Or maybe there is some small Realart identifier on these stills that I'm not seeing?

These are the 3 that caught my eye:

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/6891536.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/7017998.html

http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archiveitem/15651314.html

I don't know that it would be that easy to attribute these to Realart, in part for some of these reasons:

1) many stills have no identification on them what-so-ever and frequently blank because stills are printed for different purposes.
stills exhibited in a theatre will generally have the title & date etc & an nss slug.
stills printed purely as promotional items in presskits may not
stills sent to news outlets generally have no imprint as they don't come from NSS, they come from the studio. These stills most commonly have typed or printed snipes on back
key sets bear no identification quite often other than a copyright date & company slug

these rules are not always the same, as different movie companies may not use the same methods and even different NSS distributors may not use the same methods


2) unless they are in an original Realart envelope, with other stills that have Realart identification, that would be correct that they cannot be identified definitively as Realart stills and you may not be able to tell (for instance) if they were instead Shock Theatre promo stills (TV) of the late 50s or stills printed for some other use such as magazine articles and the news service requested pics, though generally, news services stamped the back of their file copies

and there are many other reasons for stills to be printed.


3) the # on the stills is not a useful indicator of release, as the 310- is used on all releases to my knowledge.
It would be impossible in my opinion to definitively date these stills

4) as a result of this it would have be best to describe them as '1950s' or even 'unknown vintage'


keep in mind, as I noted, these rules vary from company to company, NSS to NSS, purpose to purpose, decade to decade
but there is no definitive way to say these are Realart stills, promotional stills, or otherwise.

[MoviePosterBid.com]

look at these stills and try to figure out the different uses they were printed for

[MoviePosterBid.com]

by the way, looking again at yur stills, it's becoming more apparent to me that they are probably not 1950s stills, and could very easily be repros

[MoviePosterBid.com]

doesn't anyone want to take a shot at identifying the uses of the stills I posted?
there is an education in there

also Marc, I did consider that those stills of yours could be international as I have some 1930s Universal stills I got from overseas that are similar to yours in that the snipe data is not present in the bottom margin

[timelessmoviemagic]

Rich,

Many thanks for the information you have given in this thread.

The paper definitely feels the same as all the other stills I have and they are definitely from 1933-1951 and as you noted they could also be repros. The story behind how the stills came about just leads me to believe they were used for some form of advertising by the film company in the years 1933-1951.

Going through all the stills I have from this chap.

Draculas Daughter 1936
Son of Frankenstein 1939
Black Friday 1940
The Man Who Changed His Mind 1936
Dracula /Frankenstein combo 1938
Invisible Man 1934
Zanzibar 1940
Gunga Din 1939
Three Maxims 1938
Bulldog Jack 1935
Climbing High 1938
House of Seven Gables 1940
Java Seas 1935
King Solomon's Mines 1937
Lady Tubbs 1935
Mikado 1939
The Gap 1937
Werewolf of London 1935
Oh Mr Porter 1937
Wheres That Fire 1940
Tales of Hoffman 1951
Charlie Chan at the Race Track 1936
Tarzan Finds a Son 1939


And you can see why I think the stills are from this era as every other still is the 30's and 1940 apart from Tales of Hoffman (1951)

Your last comment is interesting as some of the stills above have Gaumont British Pictures on them and GFD, meaning they were used in the UK market. So the Frankenstein's could be as you mentioned, International stills with no info.

I mentioned in an earlier post about some numbers on the back of one of the stills. I checked again as the numbers are 52994. Possibly 1952? I don't know.

[MoviePosterBid.com]

52994 would not correspond to anything in the USA
whether the UK also had an NSS-like numbering system I have never heard discussed

and of course Mark, you know you are always welcome!

[erik1925]

Marc,

Do the other Uni horror titles you mentioned in your above post (Drac daughter, Son Of Frank, Invisible Man) have anything printed on the bottom borders? Or are they also blank and void of any text?

[timelessmoviemagic]

Jeff,

These all have writing on the front of the stills. Off the top of my head only the Frankenstein stills have no writing on the front.

[erik1925]

Jeff,

These all have writing on the front of the stills. Off the top of my head only the Frankenstein stills have no writing on the front.

Ooooo... sounds good, Marc.

Please do post images of those, too, when you have the chance. Would love to see them. I'm sure many would.