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.