*SWISS MISS (1938) Laurel and Hardy Original Release Stone Lithograph Poster

Description

This is a vintage original French stone lithograph poster from the classic 1930's musical comedy
SWISS MISS
, released in 1938 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and co-directed by John G. Blystone and comedy legend Hal Roach.
Stan Laurel
and
Oliver Hardy
co-star as mousetrap salesmen hoping to strike it rich in Switzerland but get swindled out of all their money by a cheesemaker. While working off their hotel debt, Oliver falls in love with a chambermaid, Anna (Grete Natzler), who in reality is a famous opera singer spying on her composer husband, Victor (Walter Woolf King), while he works on his new opera. The boys are assigned to move Victor's piano to a secluded tree house but become trapped on a rickety rope bridge high above an Alpine gorge when they're met halfway across by a gorilla (Charles Gamora).
Released in France in December of 1938,
the poster features beautiful artwork by the famed French poster artist Boris Grinsson
, who designed over 2,000 movie posters during his career, and features his signature to the left of Oliver's image near the border. It depicts Stan and Ollie both wearing "traditional" Swiss-styled outfits consisting of short pants, a vest and hats with a feather in them, as Stan braces himself at the edge of a cliff as he holds the rope that Ollie is clinging to as he dangles high above the sleepy village beneath him. The film's leading lady, Grete Natzler, is depicted next to Stan with mountain peaks behind them.
Measuring 31.5 x 46.5 inches, this poster is a stone lithograph, so it features beautiful rich colors and very fine detail in the printing. Stone lithographs are prized by collectors due to their beauty and the process was discontinued in the U.S. in the early 1930's due to cost while the French and some other countries continued this labor-intensive process into the 1940s. This poster is in its original unbacked, unrestored state and folded as originally issued. It is in very good+/near-fine condition with small creases on the top corners; two pinholes in the top left corner and s a small hole in the top right corner where, we assume, pinholes once were which connect to a small tear; a small bit of separation along the center foldline in a small portion of the outer white borders only; small areas of separation at each of the three crossafolds; a 1.25-in. horizontal tear on the center crossfold within the top portion of the poster in the last "L" in "Laurel" and within the bottom portion of the "M" in "MONTAGNARDS";  a 1.75-in. long area of separation at the very bottom of the center vertical foldline within the border only; a tiny area of paper loss along the edge of the left border just beneath the bottom horizontal foldline; and light v-shaped crease at each of the three foldlines that enter the image area starting at the left and right borders. This poster would look fantastic if it was linen-backed, as all of the foldlines would disappear and the poster would only require very minimal restoration since it is in such great original condition.
As a comparison, the film's U.S. "Style D" one-sheet poster features a very similar image and has sold at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, TX for almost ,200.
Rumored to have been filmed in Color but the film was processed into black-and-white. Close examination of the black-and-white film quality compared to similar Laurel and Hardy features of that time possibly suggest this but so far a color print has not surfaced. The film was idea for color testing due to the sets costumes and even the title lettering used. This film has a famous comedy scene with Laurel and Hardy trying to move a piano across a bridge suspended high above some mountains. Originally, there was to have been a subplot in which a bomb had been secretly attached to some keys in the piano, thus adding suspense to the comedy. Producer Hal Roach deleted the bomb subplot but retained the now-pointless shots of Laurel accidentally hitting the piano keys.
Swiss Miss
; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; 1938; dir: John G. Blystone and Hal Roach; cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Grete Natzler, Walter Woolf King, Eric Blore, Adia Kuznetzoff, Charles Judels, Ludovico Tomarchio, Franz Hug, Jean De Briac, George Sorel, Charles Gemora.