Advertisement printed on a rectangular sheet of off-white paper. Printed across the top is a line of large white text, slightly overlaying a large central image of a man’s angled face, his brows furrowed and eyes looking to the side. In the top left is a collage of several photographic images featuring two men in cloth caps, a man and woman with their cheeks pressed together, and a woman standing with hands on her hips. The top quarter of the paper has a gradient orange background, with the darkest tone along the edge and the lightest behind the small images. Directly below these images is the name of the principal actor and the production company, in black and green text. To the right of the large image is a photo of a makeshift cross, created from a cutoff tree with a horizontal board attached to the front. In the upper right corner is a white rectangle containing blue text, overlaid by a green-toned photo of a man and woman, sitting and holding hands. The names of the film and principal cast, along with production credits are printed in red and blue across the bottom of the sheet. A black, circular logo for the production studio is in the bottom right corner. On the back of the sheet is a handwritten inscription in black ink and bleed-through from the front. A single large crease runs vertically through the center, and the back is stained and discolored. Depicted: Spencer Tracy as George Heisler, Signe Hasso as Toni, Agnes Moorehead as Mme. Marelli, Karen Verne as Leni, others unidentified back, handwritten, script, black ink : To / Najur(?) from Anwar(?)
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The advertisement was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
The Cinema Judaica Collection consists of more than 1,200 objects relating to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical subjects, from 1923 to 2000, from the United States, Europe, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. The collection was amassed by film memorabilia collector Ken Sutak, to document Holocaust-and Jewish-themed movies of the World War II era and the postwar years. The collection includes posters, lobby and photo cards, scene stills, pressbooks, trade ads, programs, magazines, books, VHS tapes, DVDS, and 78 rpm records. Sutak organized these materials into two groups, “Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949” and “Cinema Judaica: The Epic Cycle, 1950–1972” and, in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum (now the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York), organized exhibitions on these two themes in 2007 and 2008. Sutak subsequently authored companion books with the same titles.
Overall: Height: 6.750 inches (17.145 cm) | Width: 11.750 inches (29.845 cm)
United States herald for the film, “The Seventh Cross,” released in September 1944. Heralds were small, inexpensive flyers usually included as part of a film’s press kit. The film was based on a 1942 novel of the same name by German author, Anna Seghers, who fled from the Nazi authorities to Mexico. “The Seventh Cross” takes place in 1936, in Germany, when seven Jewish and political prisoners escape from a concentration camp. Six are caught, killed, and tied to makeshift crosses, but a seventh escapee manages to elude the soldiers. While seeking help, the protagonist comes across many ordinary Germans (many of whom were portrayed by real-life German refugees), who prove to have complex motivations. Rather than equating all Germans with Nazism, it creates sympathy for the ordinary people. Throughout the film, the voice-over narration from one of the killed escapees reflects the undocumented perspective of the victims in the historical record. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.
U.S. herald for the film, “The Seventh Cross” (1944)