Most movie buffs would struggle if you ask them to name a few Hollywood movies released in the 1930s. Victor Antony Noone, though, will show you their posters.
Prominent among Noone’s unique poster collection are names like Melody Cruise, Tiger Shark, Treasure Island, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Adventures of Robinhood, all Hollywood movies released in the 1930s. Noone, a criminal lawyer from Malaparamba, has a collection of around 200 notices of films, most of them Hollywood and Bollywood, that were screened in the theatres in the city during 1934-1954.
“I was not born when theatres in the city started screening movies. My father Leslie Noone was a postmaster and was fond of films and literature. These notices were collected by him and I am only carrying that legacy forward,” said Noone.
His collection includes notices of films screened at the first three theatres built in the city, including ‘Radha Talkies’, ‘Crown Talkies’ and ‘Coronation’.
The notices, meant for publicity, look like advertisements with stills from the movies with details of the film crew on the one side, synopsis of the story and name of the theatre, including details of show time on the other.
“Unlike today, displaying a big poster of a movie on a wall or public places was not common. Instead, the small-sized notices would be distributed to attract people to theatre,” said Noone.
Surprisingly, while the movies were black and white, notices were printed in colour, including the stills from the film. These notices also shed light on the price of the seats with `1 and two ‘annas’ per seat in the balcony and only one anna for the lowest class.
Terming the collection valuable, A R Prakash, owner of the Crown theatre said, “We don’t know when the Crown theatre started screening movies. It was my father who started it in the 1930s and there is no written document or posters of that time with us.” That is one story he would probably find in Noone’s collection.
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