Here are some movie publicity photos I bought in Bruce Hershenson’s auctions or ebay over the last few months. 

I read all of Robert E. Howard’s Conan novels in the Lancer paperback editions in the 1960s and collected the Marvel comic book version starting about 1970.  I was pleased with the first Conan movie version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and saw it when it was first in the theaters in 1982. The photo shown at left is one of my favorite scenes in the movie when Conan, just rescued by sorcery from death, is reveling in his newly restored strength and realizes now he can even the score with his enemy, Thulsa Doom. Click here for the rest of the Conan photos in this set.

I wasn’t old enough to have the seen the Jimmy Stewart 1959 movie The F.B.I. Story originally in the theater. But I saw it on TV many years later. I had earlier read the John Toland book The Dillinger Days and the famous 1930s gangsters in that book were all in this movie and I thought that was pretty cool. I bought a half-sheet poster from this movie from Art Harvey at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Con in 2012 and later when a few photos in nice shape turned up on ebay I snapped them up. The photo below shows F.B.I. agent Jimmy Stewart watching John Dillinger coming out of the theater with the “woman in red” who fingered him for the G-Men. What happens next is shown in one of the photos here.

I enjoyed the Charlton Heston movie The Warlord when I saw it in the theater in Savannah in 1965 when I was 11 years old. I remember my White Bluff Elementary School classmate, Clay King, thought Rosemary Forsyth was sexy. I thought so to but I wasn’t old enough to fully appreciate her making out with Heston in his medieval Norman tower. I was more excited by the movie’s excellent battle scenes. Rosemary Forsyth is going to be at the Williamsburg Film Festival in March 2013 and I have a photo of her from this movie to sign. Click here for the rest of the photos.

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t a John Wayne fan.  I think the first Wayne movie I saw in the theater was The Alamo in 1960.  I saw his movies in the theater hit or miss through the rest of the 1960s and saw most most of them in the theaters from the 1968 True Grit onwards. In the early 1970s I remember watching on TV his primitive 1930s B westerns before he became famous. Those movies weren’t very good but I watched them anyway. I saw his last movie The Shootist from 1977 in Birmingham with my cousins Pete and Butch and maybe Mike was there too, I don’t remember for sure. An insert poster from that movie is closing out in a few days in Bruce Hershenson’s auctions and I plan to get it. Somebody will have to bid very high to prevent me. The photo below is from True Grit showing the main cast with producer Hall Wallis. I saw this movie in 1968 at the best theater in Savannah, the plush Lucas Theater with all my brothers and sister. My laser disc version had a cropped picture. My first DVD was widescreen but had a soft picture. Finally a decent Blu Ray came out several months ago. Also, a nice photo of Wayne meeting Lucille Ball is shown here. Somebody else in a Hershenson auction really wanted this photo with Lucy. I had to bid $32 for it.

I’ve always liked science fiction movies, but mostly the well done ones by George Pal and other producers. I don’t especially like the low budget ones by American International Pictures (AIP). But there are some exceptions and this neatly done thriller X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes is one of them. Ray Milland and Don Rickles are fun to watch in this movie. I saw it on TV way back in the 1970s and never saw it again until it came out on DVD a few years ago. I was glad to get these few photos on ebay recently. Another AIP movie with Milland I like even more is the excellent 1962 Panic In Year Zero but so far I’ve had no luck finding decent condition posters or photos from that movie.