vampires & cowboys

A couple of old movie posters sold for big bucks at a Texas auction yesterday. An original "Dracula" (Tod Browning, 1931) 40x20 went for $143,400, and a poster for the less-well-known but Oscar-winning western "Cimarron" (Wesley Ruggles, 1931) sold for $101,575.

They were discovered in a bundle of old posters stuck together with wallpaper paste which sold for $30,000 at an auction in Texas last fall.

These kinds of prices indicate the cultural significance of both the movies that date from the early days of talkies in Hollywood, and the poster art that supported their commercial release.

Other early sound pictures that had a tremendous impact included the Marx Brothers' first movie, "The Cocoanuts" (1929), and the World War I drama "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1931).