BELLE STARR (1941) 6370

Original 20th Century Fox One Sheet Poster (27x41) for the Irving Cummings western, BELLE STARR (1941) starring Gene Tierney, Randolph Scott and Dana Andrews. If there was ever a gap between a biopic's cinema heroine (The Bandit Queen) and the real life character, it was never more greatly realized than in this film. In truth Belle Starr was a murderous Missouri hooker who slept with just about every outlaw she knew, but Fox turned her into the self-sacrificing and gorgeous Gene Tierney. Two years after GONE WITH THE WIND, Tierney was encouraged to play the role with a southern drawl. Belle is portrayed in this film as carrying on the good fight of the Old South long after the Civil War had ended, but history tells us that the woman who married Sam Starr in 1880 was a common horse thief. Nevertheless, audiences in 1941 were wowed by Tierney, Ray Rennahan's beautiful Technicolor cinematography and one of Alfred Newman's most haunting and inventive scores. There were two one sheets for this film, as is often the case with Fox, and this is the rarer offset style B. Both sheets are pretty, but this one takes the cake, I think. This original style B one sheet poster is linen-backed and in very fine plus condition with some minor touch-up along the fold intersections.