LONG ARM 1956 Jack Hawkins, Dorothy Alison EALING STUDIOS US 1-SHEET POSTER

Original U.S. 27 inch x 41 inch 1-Sheet Poster for the 1956 Charles Frend Ealing Thriller THE LONG ARM (THE THIRD KEY) starring Jack Hawkins, Dorothy Alison, John Stratton, Ursula Howells, Michael Brooke, Geoffrey Keen, Sidney Tafler and Meredith Edwards.

The last film made at Ealing was this Scotland Yard thriller, with Jack Hawkins as a weary, overworked detective superindendent pursuing an ingenious safe breaker. There is a televisual style to the filming, anticipating the shape of programmes to come.

Poster art by Arnaldo Putzu (1927 - 2012).
After studying art in Rome Arnaldo Putzu met poster artist Enrico de Seta in 1948 whilst doing illustration work in Milan. De Seta took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming post-war Italian film industry. In the early 1950s Putzu went freelance working for, among others, Augusto Favalli, a fine artist who had set up a commercial studio in 1946 employing several artists and collaborating with the production company Lux Film.
Around the same time John Davis of the Rank Organisation asked Eric Pulford, then creative head of Rank's Downton Advertising, to produce some special brochures for their Italian office. Pulford flew out to Rome and worked alongside Augusto Favalli and his team of artists. When Favalli died in 1969 some of the artists, including Putzu, moved to London to work with Pulford, whose expanding company by then was producing poster art for several major film companies.

The poster is in very good folded condition.