An ultra rare original 1903 vintage movie poster for Life Behind The Bars, an American silent, crime, prison melodrama created by Walter Barnsdale, a forgotten pioneer of movies who, at the turn of the 20th century in Wisconsin, created his own movies and exhibited them in towns and prisons around the country. Something that really set Barnsdale apart from everyone else is that he understood the value in having great full-colour posters with artwork, almost a decade before anyone was doing it! Many of Barnsdale's movies were morality plays, designed to uplift the inmates who viewed them. In the 1960s, Barnsdale's son surfaced with multiple examples of several posters his father had made at the turn of the twentieth century. Those posters were sold decades ago, and one rarely sees any of them for sale, apart from this one! This is antique art.
Life Behind The Bars (1903)
Medium (75cm x 54cm) Linen backed
Good condition prior to linen backing. The poster had some tiny paper loss on parts of the folds, and some minor surface smudges and wear in the borders. The image area is one piece, and the top title area is like a large snipe glued to the top of the image. Either the movie was released under more than one title, or perhaps they used the image to advertise more than one movie, since Barnsdale made several prison movies.