Original United Artists Style B One Sheet Poster (27×41) for the Stanley Kramer cult comedy classic, IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD (1963) starring Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Side Caesar, and Buddy Hackett. With a $7 million budget, this movie wanted to be the biggest, most lavish comedy ever made with a seeming cast of “thousands” of some of the funniest comedians of the time. The movie-wags pronounced Stanley Kramer MAD when he departed from his usual brand – the socially conscious, progressive, liberal film that had marked his career throughout the 1950s — films like THE DEFIANT ONES, ON THE BEACH and INHERIT THE WIND, and filmed this comic epic for the new single-lens CINERAMA circuit. But in a way, Kramer was merely continuing his war against greed, but this time in a comic vein, using the best comedians of the era to show what happens when avarice takes over the lives of a group of people out to find a pile of buried cash. Two wonderful posters were created for the film, one by Mad magazine artist Jack Davis and this one by the modernist illustrator and designer Saul Bass. This style B one sheet is for the 35mm release of the movie. The poster has some fold separation in the top vertical fold and minor pinholes and rumples. This original one sheet poster is folded and in fine plus condition.

Original Columbia Pictures One Sheet Poster (27×41) for the Stanley Kramer comedy, OKLAHOMA CRUDE (1973) starring George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway, John Mills, and Jack Palance. This original one sheet poster is in very fine condition.

Original United Artists One Sheet Poster (27×41) for the Stanley Kramer post-nuclear war drama, ON THE BEACH (1959). Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Tony Perkins, and Fred Astaire starred in this film about the survivors of a nuclear war who face extinction because of radioactive fallout. A melancholic love story about a U.S. Naval submarine captain and an Australian woman who are thrown together in a post apocalyptic world, the film was one of the last important films of the decade of the 1950s. Based on a novel by Nevil Shute, the movie was one of the first popular examinations of the meaning of nuclear conflict. Watching the film today one is surprised by its still potent message, “There is still, time, brother.” But is there? The poster is a folded one sheet in fine plus condition with some minor distresses. Presents well. This poster is printed with blank and hot pink dayglo on white paper.

Original Columbia Pictures Pressbook (11×17) for the Stanley Kramer interracial romance, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967)—starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Houghton. Tracy and Hepburn play a couple whose attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiance who is black. Racial prejudice was common in 1967; indeed, the first interracial kiss on American TV did not occur until 1969 on Star Trek. People needed to hear the message that color and race should not prevent two people who love each other from getting married. The film received 10 Oscar nominations—including Best Actor (Tracy for his last film role), Best Director, and Best Picture. The film received the Oscar for Best Screenplay and Best Actress for the second time to Katharine Hepburn. People wanting to read more about this film should pick up a copy of Mark Harris’ book PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION (Penguin Press, 2008). This original pressbook has no excisions and is in very fine condition. 14 pages of great material. If this is a film you love, you will like the pressbook — an interesting look into how Columbia marketed this movie.