Paper made for a job
For most of the twentieth century, cinema posters were not sold to the public. In the United States they were distributed to theatres, largely through the National Screen Service, which rented and sold advertising material on behalf of the studios. Posters were meant to be returned or discarded once a film finished its run. That working purpose explains nearly every physical detail a collector looks for.
The standard American poster was the one-sheet, traditionally 27 by 41 inches, later trimmed to 27 by 40. Around it sat a family of formats: the half-sheet at 22 by 28 inches, often on card stock; the tall, narrow insert at 14 by 36 inches; and large multi-panel sheets for billboards outside theatres. Each size suited a different spot in the lobby or on the street.
Reading the folds
Run your eye across an older one-sheet and you will usually find a grid of creases. Before the mid-1980s, posters were generally folded for shipping in envelopes alongside the film. Rolled posters became the norm later, partly because collectors and the growing retail market preferred them without folds. So fold lines are not damage in the usual sense; they are evidence. A rolled poster from a period when folding was standard deserves a second look, as does a folded one claiming to be recent.
Pinholes in the corners, tape stains, and a faded strip along one edge where sun fell through a lobby window each tell where a poster spent its life.
The small code in the corner
Many National Screen Service posters carry a short code in the lower margin, such as "58/317". The first part gives the year, the second a sequence number for that year's releases. Alongside it you often find the line confirming that the poster was licensed for display only in connection with the film's exhibition at a theatre and was to be returned afterwards. It is the poster's own small wall label, and it is one of the first things serious collectors check when judging whether a piece is an original release or a later reissue.
Lobby cards: a film in eight frames
Lobby cards were smaller, usually 11 by 14 inches, printed on card and issued in sets, commonly eight. Typically one was a title card with credits and artwork, while the rest reproduced scenes from the film. Displayed in frames in the foyer, they worked like a still-frame trailer, showing audiences the stars, the setting and the tone. Because they used production stills, lobby cards sometimes preserve scenes that were cut before release, a detail that makes them valuable to historians as well as collectors.
The designers who distilled a film
Some posters are remembered as design in their own right. Saul Bass reduced films to bold shapes and cut-paper type: the jagged arm for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), the spiralling figure for Vertigo (1958), the dismembered silhouette for Anatomy of a Murder (1959). His work shows how much a single symbol can carry.
Across Europe, the Polish School of Posters took a freer path. Artists including Jan Lenica, Wiktor Górka and Franciszek Starowieyski were commissioned to create posters for foreign and domestic films, and they often ignored stills entirely in favour of surreal, painterly interpretations. A Polish poster for an American western might show no cowboys at all.
At the other end of the spectrum, Drew Struzan's painted illustrations for films such as the Indiana Jones series and Back to the Future defined the lush, star-led poster of the 1980s. More recently, studios such as Mondo in Austin revived interest in limited-edition screen-printed posters, where you can feel each layer of ink with a fingertip.
How to look at one
Stand back to read the composition, then step close. Check the margins for codes, the paper for folds or pinholes, and the ink for halftone dots versus flat screen-printed colour. Each tells you how, when and why the poster was made.