An original poster for the 1931 film Frankenstein is to auction at Heritage Auctions in Dallas on March 28-29 with a $100,000-200,000 estimate.
Heritage comments that the lot is "the only known copy of either of the two style three sheets created for the debut of the film.
 The original Frankenstein poster was discovered in an old cinema |
"This is the Style C and is arguably the best graphic of the two styles. The poster was found in the early 1970s in a long closed and boarded over projection booth in a remodeled theater.
"It had apparently been used as a display for a number of reissues of the film with its counterpart Dracula, as was so often the case throughout the 1930s and 1940s."
During the early years of cinema, posters were reused until they fell apart, with the result that originals are now extremely rare.
A Frankenstein insert poster sold for a world record $262,900 at Heritage in 2013.
A poster for London After Midnight (1927), starring Lon Chaney as a vampire, is likely to prove another highlight - with a valuation of $60,000-120,000.
The reels were destroyed in a fire in 1965, making this one of cinema's great lost classics.
The auction house comments: "Posters for this famous horror film have been as elusive as the film itself over the last eighty years, but Heritage has had the distinction of bringing to auction not only an Argentinean one sheet in 2009, but also the only U.S. one sheet to surface, which sold for $478,000 in the November 2014 Signature event.
"It is with immense pride and excitement we now present the only known copy of the stone litho three sheet format depicting a vampire in makeup."
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