Movie Poster Dealers in the Movies

Today I want to tell you about a rather elusive and almost forgotten sub-genre of the classic Hollywood western: Films about movie poster dealers.

Perhaps the earliest appearance of a movie poster dealer on the big screen was William S. Hart in THE POSTER MAN from 1917. The poster depicts a key scene in the movie, where the hero has just learned that he has (once again) lost out on aquiring a major collection. And don‘t we all know how that feels.

Buck Jones brought several lighter episodes from the everyday life of a movie poster dealer to the silver screen in the pre-code western RIDIN‘ FOR POSTERS (1932):

In the following year, Tim McCoy taught this fellow posters dealers the meaning of the word ‚respect‘ in POSTER MEN (1933):

And one final example, Gary Cooper won both the big collection and the girl in THE POSTERMAN (1937). Here’s the rare Style B Onesheet: