Spanish title: Moby Dick
Stars: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, Orson Welles, Herman Melville
Directed by: John Huston
Distributor: Warner Bros (for 20th Century Fox and United Artists)

"The White Whale had almost destroyed him…"

The second of our two lobby cards for John Huston’s Moby Dick, this design is by far the superior of the two.

The first relies on photo art and cheap reproductions of the original artwork shown here, whereas this one is just an A-1 design, beautifully put together, with an amazing recreation of Gregory Peck in action, as well as a breaching whale crushing a whaling fleet.

The colors are vivid, the title is well worked into the design, and even the black and white still image is framed with color, so as to work it into the overall design more fully.

The pity of this particular card is that, by the time we got it, someone in a Mexican theater somewhere had used it for a little doodling – there’s ink smudging in the white title font, as a result, along with the hand-written words, "La Panzona" (or "The Fat One"). Why? It’s all a bit of a mystery.

Oh well. With a design this busy, you barely notice a little biro here and there, especially in a frame (which is where we keep it).

Spanish title: Orgullo y Pasion
Stars: Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren
Directed by: Stanley Kramer
Distributor: United Artists of Mexico

Okay, so the depiction of Frank Sinatra looks more like Ronald Reagan than Ol’ Blue Eyes – at least nobody could deny that Sophia Loren looks like Sophia Loren, and that makes up for just about anything else the artist could throw at you.

A great still image of Loren and Grant sets this fiery design off, with Grant’s navel-high pants and cumberbund practically announcing to the world, "Behold my thunder" while Sophia Loren matches him with her gravity-defying shirt potatoes.

Yes, there was a movie at the center of all this – a movie that revovles around a giant cannon, that is abandoned by the Spanish Army as it retreats from the French, only for Spanish peasants to snare the big gun and drag it across the country to help defeat the bad guys – if they can steer clear of Cary Grant’s English Army, who want the weapon for themselves. Sophia Loren’s hips ensue.

This particular lobby card is not in A-1 shape, with tears on every corner from being ripped of the original theater wall. If that’s not enough, it looks like it was hung a second time by the sides, top and bottom of the card, and a pair of 2cm rips on the top and left hand side of the card don’t add to its value. Alas.

Spanish title: Moby Dick
Stars: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, Orson Welles
Directed by: John Huston
Distributor: Warner Bros (for 20th Century Fox and United Artists)

"Before the shark… there was the whale!"

This is one of two different lobby card releases for this film, and this is definitely the inferior one. The odd choice of circling Gregory Peck’s head with a thick white border from the still image above it is definitely not one of the great moments of Mexican lobby card design, and the artwork looks almost like a lithograph, which would indicate that it’s been taken from unoriginal second or third generation art and might have been promoting a re-release.

On this copy, the upper right hand corner has been torn off, and there’s minor damage on the bottom corner, presumably when it was torn down off the cinema wall back in the day. 

All in all, if not for the great still image of Peck driving a spear through the side of the whale, this would be headed for the bottom drawer… but hey, it’s Gregory Peck, and thus it’s worth keeping.