More old family movie treasures...

My great uncle, Gene Widhoff, had a long history doing artwork for films back in the early days. He was affiliated for many years with R.K.O. Radio Pictures, then went on to work for other studios. My father grew up eagerly looking for Gene's movie star portraits and posters when walking by movie theaters. The studio art departments would photograph the work in different layouts for varying poster sizes. Unfortunately, you don't always get to see the poster artist's signature due to this.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to come across a signed poster Gene had done that was up for auction in time to bid on it.

The film, originally titled "Men are Such Fools", was a Pre-Code drama directed by William Nigh and was released in 1932 (or so I'm told by Wikipedia). It starred Leo Carrillo, Vivienne Osborne, Una Merkel and Jos. Hawthorn.

The poster being auctioned has an interesting story: 16 years after its original release, the film was re-released in 1948, with the new title: "Prison Bait". Apparently, the studio either had a bunch of the old posters still in their possession or had them re-printed from Gene's old artwork, but in any event, they screen printed the new title atop the old one in a larger format, covering the names of the top 3 billed actors as well as the air space over the cover girl's head.

Here is a shot of the original poster as it looked in 1932, followed by the version with the new title which is now happily framed and in my possession, 85 odd years after its journey began!