SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS 1948 Stewart Granger ROBERT MEDLEY Ealing 20x30 POSTER

Original British 20 inch x 30 inch Double Crown Poster for the 1948 Basil Dearden Ealing Studios Period Drama SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS, written by John Dighton and starring Stewart Granger, Joan Greenwood, Flora Robson, Françoise Rosay, Frederick Valk, Peter Bull, Anthony Quayle, Michael Gough, Megs Jenkins, Jill Balcon, David Horne, Mercia Swinburne, Cecil Trouncer, Noel Howlett, Miles Malleson, Allan Jeayes, Aubrey Mallalieu, Edward Sinclair, Guy Rolfe, Peter Arne, Sandra Dorne, John Gregson, Barbara Murray and Anthony Steel.

Ealing’s first Technicolor film is an historical drama about the unhappy Hanoverian, Sophie Dorothea (Joan Greenwood), incarcerated for life following her illicit affair with dashing Count Koenigsmark (Stewart Granger).

The poster art is by Robert Medley
Charles Robert Owen Medley was born in Chelsea on 19th December 1905. He was educated at Gresham’s School, Norfolk, where he befriended W.H. Auden, at Byam Shaw from 1923 to 1924, at the Slade from 1924 to 1926 and in Paris from 1926 to 1928. He then taught at the Chelsea School of Art in the 1930s and 40s, in the theatre Design department of the Slade from 1949 to 1958 and was head of the Department of Fine Art at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1958 to 1965.
His first one man show was at Goupil Galleries in 1930 and he exhibited with the London Group from 1929, becoming a member in 1937. He was involved in theatre as chief designer for the left-wing Group Theatre producing sets and costumes, and later for Sadlers Wells. He painted the safety curtain for the Old Vic in 1939. He was an official war artist for the ARP. In 1945 he contributed drawings to the magazine, The Arts, illustrating poems by Kathleen Raine. He illustrated two books, one, Samson Agonistes, he considered his best work.

Printed by Graphic Reproductions Ltd. (Ealing’s main printer through the 1940s and 1950s)

The poster is in very good unfolded (rolled) condition with a few edge nicks.