Colin Clive & Boris Karloff on the set of Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir. James Whale) (via)

Poster art: Batiste Madalena edition (via)

Up until the 1950s, many movie theaters rejected the mass-produced, lithographed film posters designed and distributed by Hollywood studios in favor of original, hand-painted posters created by local artists. 

During the 1920s, Batiste Madalena was the resident artist at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, NY., where he designed and hand-painted about eight original posters per week. Madalena, who is considered the greatest poster painter of the period, was given full artistic control, with the only directive from his boss being that the posters had to be clearly visible to passengers on passing trolley cars.

More examples of Madalena’s work here. 

Claude Rains & Susanna Foster in The Phantom of the Opera (1943, dir. Arthur Lubin) (via)

The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy) (via)

Mae Murray in The Merry Widow (1925, dir. Erich von Stroheim) (via)

Kuroneko (1968, dir. Kaneto Shindô)

Bogie & Bacall with the B17 “Hell’s Angels” of the 303rd Bombardment Group during the war bond tour (1944) (via)

Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940, dir. Charlie Chaplin) (via)

“Had I known of the actual horrors of Nazi concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator. I wanted to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure-blooded race. The English office at United Artists were against my making an anti-Hitler film - until the war had started.”

-Chaplin, quoted in My Life in Pictures (1974)

Steve McQueen on the set of Bullitt (1968, dir. Peter Yates) (via)

Katharine Hepburn in The Sea of Grass (1947, dir. Elia Kazan) (via)

Assorted Jets rehearse on the set of West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins) Photo by Gjon Mili for LIFE.