ORACLE 1952 Virginia McKenna, Robert Beatty RONALD SEARLE QUAD POSTER

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster the 1952 C.M. Pennington-Richards Comedy THE ORACLE, based on the radio play "To Tell You the Truth" by Robert Barr and starring Robert Beatty, Joseph Tomelty, Virginia McKenna, Mervyn Johns, Michael Medwin, Gilbert Harding, Gillian Lind, Ursula Howells and Arthur Macrae.

Timothy Blake (Michael Medwin), a British reporter holidaying or a remote island offshore of Ireland, hears a man's voice coming from the bottom of a well. The voice turns out to be a modern-day Oracle, or fortune teller, whose predictions prove uncannily accurate. Bob is determined to get a story out of this, but his editor is less enthusiastic and promptly fires him. The newfound publicity though, means the once-sleepy Irish village is now invaded with curiosity seekers, and those seeking the horse racing results.

Poster art by Ronald Searle (1920 - 2011).
Ronald William Fordham Searle was born in 1920. He enlisted in the Royal Engineers at the outbreak of the Second World War, spending part of the time in Kirkcudbright, on the west coast of Scotland. Here he encountered evacuees from St. Trinnean’s, a progressive girls’ school situated in Edinburgh. This encounter resulted in his first cartoon for Lilliput in 1941 and developed into one of his most famous creations and although he changed the name from the Gaelic to St. Trinian’s, the school, and it’s headmistress, were the brunt of many jokes till the school’s closure in 1946. >Printed by W.E. Berry Ltd., Bradford
The poster is in very good unfolded condition with minor crumpling down the left edge and a small tear in the lower left corner.