Freaks, 1932 Original Vintage Movie Theater Herald

Original Vintage Sci Fi Horror Movie Memorabilia Collectibles Theater Film Posters For Sale
Freaks, 1932 
Original Vintage Movie Theater Herald

 

 

Extremely Rare Original 1932 “FREAKS” movie theater Herald.   Any movie paper form the original 1932 release of this film is near Non-existent.   Based on our research only One other original 1932 “FREAKS” Herald has ever surfaced and that was 15 years ago.   Although I hae seen lobby cards, and re-release One and Half sheets, this is the First original 1932 Herald I have ever seen in 40+  years collecting. 

Fantastic artwork and graphics on the Rare Gem.  A museum grade piece of Hollywood history that’s not likely to surface any time soon or possibly Ever Again!  Just an awesome  piece to add to your historic classic movie collection!

Excellent condition with original fold line

* See enlargeable images above and below

 

Freaks (MGM, 1932). Herald (8.75" X 5.5").
One of the more controversial and disturbing films of the 1930s was Tod Browning's drama about the lives of sideshow circus performers. Original paper from this film is incredibly scarce. Show dates are stamped on the back.

BIO:

Freaks is a 1932 American horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs". Director Browning took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks," rather than using costumes and makeup.

Browning had been a member of a traveling circus in his early years, and much of the film was drawn from his personal experiences. In the film, the physically deformed "freaks" are inherently trusting and honorable people, while the real monsters are two of the "normal" members of the circus who conspire to murder one of the performers to obtain his large inheritance..

Freaks (Excelsior, R-1949). Half Sheet (22" X 28").
For horror fans who like their films to be on the more bizarre end of human depravity, this film has to rank as one of the most unusual and enticing. Set in the cruel world of traveling carnival shows, Harry and Daisy Earles, Johnny Eck, and Roscoe Ates star as performers who seek the ultimate revenge on Hercules and Cleopatra (Henry Victor and Olga Baclanova) after they discover their murder plot. Shortly after the film's release in 1932, it was pulled from distribution and not seen again for years. Exploitation film distributor Dwain Esper bought the rights, and traveled the country showing the film in the late 1940s. The poster has corner bumps, a small tear in the right border, and a few thin dust shadows. 

Reaction:

Journeyman screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald was nursing a hangover in the studio commissary and looked up from his meal to behold the Siamese twin sisters walking in to order lunch. "What shall we have today?" one asked the other. Fitzgerald ran to the bathroom and vomited.

Despite the extensive cuts, the film was still negatively received by audiences, and remained an object of extreme controversy. Today, the parts that were removed from it are considered lost. Browning, famed at the time for his collaborations with Lon Chaney and for directing Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931) had trouble finding work afterward, and this in effect brought his career to an early close. Because its deformed cast was shocking to moviegoers of the time, the film was banned in the United Kingdom for 30 years. Beginning in the early 1960s, Freaks was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film; throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the film was regularly shown at midnight movie screenings at several movie theaters in the United States. In 1994, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was ranked 15th on Bravo TV's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Among the characters featured as "freaks" were Peter Robinson ("the human skeleton"); Olga Roderick ("the bearded lady"); Frances O'Connor and Martha Morris ("armless wonders"); and the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Among the microcephalics who appear in the film (and are referred to as "pinheads") were Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow) and Schlitzie, a male named Simon Metz who wore a dress mainly due to incontinence, a disputed claim. Also featured were the intersexual Josephine Joseph, with her left/right divided gender; Johnny Eck, the legless man; the completely limbless Prince Randian (also known as The Human Torso, and mis-credited as "Rardion"); Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman; and Koo-Koo the Bird Girl, who suffered from Virchow-Seckel syndrome or bird-headed dwarfism, and is most remembered for the scene where she dances on the table.

Cult reaction:

Owing to its cult status in the late-20th century, Freaks has been referenced explicitly in popular culture expressions from 1970s onward, from songs by other self-proclaimed "freaks", such as the Ramones ("Pinhead" "Gabba, gabba, we accept you, one of us."), Marillion ("Freaks", "Separated Out") and David Bowie ("Diamond Dogs"), to "cult" comic strips like Zippy the Pinhead (a reference to the aforementioned microcephalic), and episodes of many TV series, including South Park, Clerks: The Animated Series, Futurama ("Bendin' in the Wind") and The Big Bang Theory . The chant of "One of us!" is commonly used as a reference to the film. Clips from the movie were included in the entrance video of former World Wrestling Federation faction Oddities.

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