Vintage original 39.5 x 55 in. international poster from the teens silent film comedy short, A HANDSOMER MAN, released in 1911 by the American Vitagraph Company of America.
The stone lithograph artwork was designed by Harry Bedos and features two images of the film’s star, Maurice Costello, shown in profile as well as smiling at the viewer. This poster was printed for international distribution and depicts the film's title in French, English and Dutch. Vitagraph was one of the few, if not the only, American studio to issue these large-format posters with the film's title in multiple languages. It has been professionally linen-backed without any restoration and is in very fine- condition.
Provenance: The Leonard Maltin Collection.
John (Maurice Costello) is very jealous of his wife. He starts for his office in the morning in a huff. When he returns home, he finds a note on the table from his wife, saying that she has gone with a handsomer man, for an auto ride. Deciding to end it all, he rushes to his bureau drawer, takes out his revolver, and is on the point of pulling the trigger, when the telephone bell rings. He answers it and is surprised to hear his wife's voice, saying that she is out with her father, who called to take her for a ride. He sinks back into a chair and patiently awaits her arrival."
*(source: IMDb)
*"Costello joined Vitagraph, being a member of the first motion picture stock company ever formed, playing opposite Florence Turner. Among some of his best known pictures are A Tale of Two Cities, The Man Who Couldn't Beat God and For the Honor of the Family. Costello was notorious for his refusal to help build sets, insisting that he was "hired as an actor and nothing else", despite the common practice of the time. From this and his role as the creator of the first known school of screen acting, Costello is sometimes credited as "the father of screen acting".
Costello was one of the world's first leading men in early American cinema, but like a lot of other silent screen stars, he found the transition to "talkies" extremely difficult. While his leading man status was largely lost, Costello continued to appear in movies, often in small roles and bit parts, right up until his death in 1950."
*(source: Wikipedia)