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U.S. lobby card for the film “The Mortal Storm" (1940)

Object | Accession Number: 2018.590.17

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    U.S. lobby card for the film “The Mortal Storm" (1940)

    Overview

    Brief Narrative
    Lobby card for the American feature film, “The Mortal Storm,” released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in June 1940. Lobby cards were promotional materials placed in theater lobby windows to highlight specific movie scenes, rather than the broader themes often depicted on posters. “The Mortal Storm,” based on a 1938 novel of the same name, was MGM’s first film that openly criticized Nazi Germany. Beginning in 1933, just after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, it features a Jewish professor of medicine and his daughter, whose fiancé and stepbrothers join the Nazi party. The professor is sent to a concentration camp, while his daughter attempts to cross the Austrian border with a former student of her father’s. The writers of the screenplay were themselves refugees from Nazi Germany. After the movie’s release, German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels ordered the Berlin office of MGM’s parent company, Lowe’s, to close. He also banned the film (as well as subsequent MGM films) in all German-occupied territories. 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.
    Date
    Cinematic Release:  1940 June 14
    Geography
    creation: United States
    distribution: United States
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur
    Markings
    Markings – during manufacture (placement, method, medium: exact translation) [English Translation if in a foreign language]):

    front, left margin, printed, blue ink : “We / hope / you’ll join / with us . . . / otherwise, our / friendship must / end!”
    front, bottom left corner, printed, white and red ink : The / Mortal / Storm / A / Metro- / Goldwyn- / Mayer / PICTURE
    front, bottom, printed, orange and yellow ink : starring MARGARET / SULLAVAN / JAMES / STEWART / ROBERT / YOUNG / FRANK / MORGAN
    front, bottom right margin, printed, blue ink : COUNTRY OF ORIGIN U.S.A.
    Contributor
    Compiler: Ken Sutak
    Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
    Biography
    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.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Classification
    Posters
    Object Type
    Lobby Cards (lcsh)
    Genre/Form
    Display Cards.
    Physical Description
    Lobby card with a photographic image printed on rectangular, off-white paper for the film “The Mortal Storm. A white border surrounds the image, which depicts a red-haired woman sitting between two dark-haired men at a table. The men are staring at each other, while the woman is looking at the man on the right. They are sitting inside a restaurant with water glasses and a bread basket on the table in front of them. In the bottom left corner, an illustration of a tilted red and blue book with the film title is printed in white letters. In the book’s bottom right corner is a logo for the studio inside a yellow circle. The names of the principal actors are printed in orange and yellow in a black banner below the image. Several lines of blue text are printed in the margin on the left side, and a single line of blue text is printed in the bottom right margin. There are pinholes along the upper margin and within the upper image, and many small creases and tears along the edges of the card. On the back, there is ink transfer on the lower half.

    Left to right:
    James Stewart as Martin Breitner, Margaret Sullavan as Freya Roth, and Robert Young as Fritz Marberg
    Dimensions
    Overall: Height: 11.000 inches (27.94 cm) | Width: 14.000 inches (35.56 cm)
    Materials
    overall : paper, ink

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    No restrictions on access
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. Copyright status is unknown.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Geographic Name
    Austria. Germany.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The lobby card was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
    Record last modified:
    2023-05-24 12:28:01
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn692991

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