Spanish title: La Guerra Y La Paz
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer, Vittorio Gassman, Herbert Lom, Oscar Homolka, Anita Ekberg, John Mills, Helmut Dantine, Barry Jones, Anna Maria Ferrero, Milly Vitale, Jeremy Brett
Directed by: King Vidor
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

"Based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy"

This Dino DeLaurentis epic features a lobby card that’s a bit of a rarity: the portrait design. Unlike the usual ‘landscape’ design, in which the lobby card is wider than it is high, this one is turned 90 degrees clockwise, like a mini-movie poster. It’s also printed on much thinner stock (in fact, it’s paper rather than cardboard), which gives the colors a much brighter tinge. The copy in our collection is in surprisingly good shape, considering how easy it would be to damage.

The artwork in the design is all original, but it’s not as well done as many other lobby cards, with Audrey Hepburn coming off looking like she’s seven feet tall, with a giraffe’s neck and cleavage that would make Isaac Newton throw away his notepad.

Apparently, the first draft of this screenplay came out at over 500 pages – five times what a normal screenplay would run to. The film was so epic in nature that 65 doctors were hired to play soldiers in the battle scenes, just in case any extras were injured and needed immediate care. Audrey Hepburn was paid $350,000 for her role – the highest fee for any actress to the point in history.

I thought it was a little overplayed… but that’s me. 

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.