The phrase "museum quality" is sometimes used for fine vintage movie posters, indicating that they deserve to be included in, and displayed in a museum. It is most often used for a poster that has multiple qualities: extreme rarity, important historical significance, and a great image. eMoviePoster.com's July Major Auction includes a number of posters that deserve this "museum quality" appelation, but there is one poster that does that might not be immediately evident as such, because its star is not well remembered in today's world, but who certainly deserves to be!
The poster is "The Widow's Might" (the auction is at http://auctions.emovieposter.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=6045771) and its star was Julian Eltinge. Who was Julian Eltinge? Forgotten today except by historians, he was born in Massachusetts in 1881, and as a young child he enjoyed performing dressed as a female. When he was 23 he performed in a Broadway musical (by Jerome Kern) as a man impersonating a woman, and his great success led to a major career in vaudeville. He would perform a series of singing and dancing acts, with many costume changes, and audiences did not see him as a man pretending to me a woman, but they saw him as a woman! In fact, he would sometimes be billed simply as "Eltinge", so the audience would be in doubt as to his gender throughout the show, and in his final number he would remove his wig to reveal he was a man (often to gasps from the audience). This was recreated in the various versions of the play and movie VIctor/Victoria. Eltinge toured the United States and Europe, and he gave a command performance for King Edward VII of England at Windsor Castle! In 1914 Julian Eltinge made the first of a dozen movies in the course of a decade, and movie paper of any kind from any of these movies is beyond rare! The one-sheet poster from "The Widow's Might" is not only the ONLY poster from any of Eltinge's movies we have ever auctioned, but we also searched the Internet and could not find any other posters. This is especially odd given that Eltinge made at least most of his movies for Paramount Pictures, which was the number one studio in the world at this time! Speaking of Paramount Pictures, imagine how daring it was for that studio to release a movie starring a cross-dressing man in 1918, during World War I. Yes, Paris had revues where cross-dressing men performed, but what did the bulk of the American movie-going audience make of this movie? Julian Eltinge was one of the most celebrated and highest paid Broadway stars (earning up to $5,000 a week), but how did middle America perceive this movie? Remember that Julian Eltinge's movies were not cross-dressing comedies like the much later "Tootsie" or "Mrs. Doubtfire", but were serious melodramas where the star just happened to be a man who could "become" a woman! Note that the one-sheet for "The Widow's Might" has great art of cross-dressing Eltinge who has an unwanted admirer in Florence Vidor, the wife of director King Vidor. Julian Eltinge paved the way for much later drag performers including Divine, Charles Pierce, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey and RuPaul. Eltinge kept his private life extremely secret, and while most historians assume he was surely gay, actress Ruth Gordon said he was "as virile as anybody is virile". He adopted a supermasculine facade in public (in an attempt to dispel rumors), and one critic described him as "ambisextrous". He acquired much wealth, and lived alone in a mansion, and when he passed away in 1940, his sold heir was his 79 year old mother. We very much hope that the one-sheet for "The Widow's Might" we are auctioning ending August 8th at http://auctions.emovieposter.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=6045771 WILL indeed find a buyer from a museum, and that it will be displayed publically, and that perhaps it can help bring new awareness to Julian Eltinge, someone who was so very far "ahead of his time", and who did so much to advance the public's awareness, understanding, and acceptance of a man who dared to be different and wear woman's clothes at a time when almost no one else dared to do so! Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
