Left in the Third Dimension

Movie Poster Archives

The vital work of preserving Louisiana film ephemera

By John Wirt

Ed and Susan Poole embarked on their love affair with movie ephemera around 1977. Strolling through the French Quarter during one of their early dates, they spotted a vendor whose offerings included an original poster for the 1959 romantic comedy Gidget. The poster summoned Susan’s memories of visiting The Famous Theatre on Marigny Street with her older sister, and of her childhood crush on James Darrin’s Gidget character, Moondoggie. Ed, noticing his future wife’s enchantment with the poster, bought it for her.

The Gidget poster now hangs above Susan’s desk in the office she shares with her husband. As Ed explained, “That’s what started all of this. It changed our lives.”

Today, much of the Pooles’ home is devoted to more than 10,000 Louisiana “film accessories,” as the couple describes the posters, lobby cards and movie stills. “It’s getting hard to walk through the house,” Ed said. “It’s taken over almost every closet, every walkway and three rooms. We’ve got a room for the grandkids and it’s creeping in on that now.”

The poster from the 1959 Louisiana Hussy film is one of the Pooles' favorites from their collection. "An awful movie" according to Ed, but an incredible artifact.

Courtesy of MPA.

For years, the Pooles collected posters for films shot just about anywhere. In 2011, they narrowed their focus to Louisiana films. Their favorite acquisitions to date include the dramatic poster for Elvis Presley’s French Quarter-set King Creole. The rock and roll superstar’s acting performance in the 1958 drama is widely regarded as his best. The couple’s other favorites include The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus, the 1962 comedy starring New Orleans’ beloved House of Shock TV host, Sid Noel. There’s also the Louisiana Hussy poster, in which actress Nan Peterson stands beneath the caption “Born to Take Love and Make Trouble.” It’s an awful movie, Ed admits, but everyone loves the poster.

It didn’t take long for the Pooles’ passion for old movies to expand beyond posters. Almost fifty years in, they have now acquired the titles of film researchers, documentarians, and authors. They followed their first book, Collecting Movie Posters (1997), with twenty-three more film reference books. Among these is Movie Poster Artists: Volume 1—U.S. and Canada (2016), which documents 242 movie poster artists through biographies, filmographies, and poster images.

In 2011, a poster for the 1913 silent film White Slave, which featured plantation imagery, piqued the couple’s curiosity. “We called libraries and museums, trying to document this film, but nobody had any information about it,” Ed said. The Pooles realized that there were no significant efforts in place to preserve Louisiana film history. “We assumed that the museums, universities, and libraries in Louisiana were doing that,” Ed said. “But we found out almost nothing was being preserved. And nobody knew how much film production had been done here, which is an unbelievable amount, for any state.”

Because most silent films (including White Slave) are lost, posters, stills, and lobby cards—film accessories—can be the major record of those productions. Films have even been reconstructed from stills and related materials. “When the film is lost, the next best thing is the paper,” Ed said.

In 2016, the Pooles joined entertainment industry veteran Linda Thurman as archivists at the New Orleans-based nonprofit, Movie Poster Archives (MPA)— which notably features a virtual Louisiana movie poster museum on its website.

Another favorite poster of the Pooles' is the 1958 film King Creole, Elvis Presley's most critically -acclaimed acting performance.

Courtesy of MPA.

When Thurman launched Movie Posters Archives, she fulfilled the Pooles’ longtime goal to create a nonprofit entity dedicated to movie accessory preservation. Thurman met the couple when she was searching for images for her 2016 book, Hollywood South: Glamor, Gumbo, and Greed.

“I was looking for a retirement gig, and I love movie posters,” Thurman said. “Movie Poster Archives fit me perfectly ... At our poster exhibits, we get such fantastic stories about what the movies mean to people. The posters take them to a different time and place.” The Pooles, she added, “are caring, passionate and knowledgeable. Sue is extremely detailed. Ed is a great personality."

Thurman entered the Pooles’ good graces in part by, in 2019, helping to bring a historical marker to Canal Street in New Orleans in recognition of Vitascope Hall, the first movie theater in the United States. “They had been trying to do that for about twenty years,” she said. “I knew a little more about how government functions, and Louisiana has its own way of doing things. It took me three years, but we got the marker erected.”

MPA, Thurman went on to explain, has an international collection of posters from different eras, in various styles. “The art is phenomenal,” she said. “The early ones were drawn by artists. Now we’re getting more of a digital style. And because the process has changed through the years, you can see the evolution of graphic art and design in the posters, and the way they were produced.”

Thurman, the Pooles’ and MPA’s more recent activities include stocking the Louisiana Film Channel’s movie collectibles retail store. Opened in September at 334 Third Street in Baton Rouge, the shop sells posters, stills, lobby cards, and related items. On October 31, MPA also held the grand opening for its own retail store and research facility at Bellemeade Plaza Shopping Center in Gretna.

Ed and Susan Poole have been collecting movie posters and accessories for almost fifty years, and are now working as the archivists at Movie Poster Archives.

Courtesy of the Pooles.

Prior to the opening of its brick and mortar location, MPA conducted periodic poster auctions on the Bidding for Good Auction platform, accessible through the MPA website. “We’ll get an entire case of the same poster,” Thurman said. “We’ll probably keep the two best copies, but the rest will be available to sell.”

Interns from Loyola’s film program assist the Pooles in organizing MPA’s massive stockpile of unsorted items—many of them tax-deductible donations from public and private entities. In the process, the couple teach the Loyola students about archiving. “We’ll be teaching everything that they won’t be able to learn everywhere else,” Ed said. “Like how to use the production code on the stills to identify which film a still is from; how to read lithography plate numbers; how to read markers on posters, stills, and press books.” Interns Christophe Cogerino and Alex Ryscavage are even making a documentary about MPA’s work titled Introducing Movie Poster Archives: Preserving Paper Memories.

As of late August, Ed estimates that a half-million donated items to MPA have yet to be reviewed. Recent donations include material from Brigham Young University in Utah and a New York advertising agency that has transitioned from physical to digital files.

At seventy-four and sixty-eight respectively, Ed and Susan Poole see no end to their film accessory work. "I could have one hundred employees and not preserve the information that needs to be preserved," said Ed. "I don't have time to retire. There's too much to do.

Through mid-November, the Movie Poster Archives store in Gretna will present an exhibition of posters from horror films made in Louisiana (prepare for the exhibition by reading Chris Turner- Neal's story "Louisiana Has a Place in Horror" on page 65). Learn more and peruse the Louisiana Movie Poster Virtual Museum at movieposterarchives.org.