I have never been particularly excited by film stills in the same way as I am for posters, but many people love to collect them. They are relatively cheap to pick up and easy to display.

Back in the day, there was a thing called a ‘lobby card’, which was basically a hand tinted still from the movie, usually printed with the film title and some some text – basically mid-way between a poster and a still.  These faded away after the 70s but are highly collectible, especially for classic old movies. I have never collected or owned any of these, but I did amass quite a few black and white film stills in the 80s while I was at university in Norwich.  

I managed to blag my way into writing movie reviews for the student newspaper, which meant I got invited along with the ‘proper’ local journalists to attend press screenings at the local cinemas.  These typically took place at around 11pm on Monday nights.  It was often quite a scrum amongst us hacks to nab the best stills on offer for our publications. It is only recently that I have realised I have somewhat accidentally built up quite a collection of these.   

This is just a small selection, featuring a few comedies from the era.   Watching these films late night in a large empty cinema in the company of just a dozen or so jaded journalists was a tough test of whether a film was actually funny or not.  I do remember us all sitting in stony silence throughout Top Secret! as joke after joke fell flat.  I hated that film with a passion, surprisingly so as it was made by the same guys who brought us Airplane!, which I loved.  The scathing review I wrote subsequently is lost in time, which is probably for the best!