Mallory, Mi📖chael, and Jason Blum. Universal Studios Monsters: A Leg🐓acy of Horror. Revised and updated edition. Universe, 2021.

Staff. ““Wolf Man Horrific Tale – Possibly Too Much So For Present Day.” The Hollywood Reporter, 10 December 1941, //variety.cꦏthe om/1931/film/reviews/frankenstein-2-1200410509/. Accessed 10 September 20🍸24.

S., T., “The Screen.” The New York Times, 22 December 1941, .

David J. Skal, interview by Justina Bollina, The Frida Cinema, 5 December 2022, .

3x THE STANDARD ONE SHEET—THE ONLY KNOWN THREE SHEET AND LARGEST POSTER FOR THE WOLF MAN KNOWN TO THE MARKET

Presenting Lon Chaney Jr. as ‘Wolf Man’ Larry Talbot bearing down on Evelyn Anker’s Gwen—the object of the beast’s doomed affections—the present lot is an exceedingly rare thre🎶e sheet poster for George Waggner’s 1941Gothic horror film.

Measuring a sizable 41 x 81 in (approximately 103 x 205 cm), three sheets are an archival poster format named for the simple fact that they are three-times the size of the standard one sheet, which were printed at 27 x 41 in (68.6 x 104.1 cm). Three sheets, like the one on offer here, were printed in either two or three horizontal segments which were then assembled in theater to create a final poster for display. Although the format itself originated in the world of vaudeville and the circus⛄, three sheets persisted through the 1970’s when cinemas were still most often one-screen, one-feature operations that could afford to dedicate all their publicity attention to a single title. As they were printed in small quantities due to their size, three sheets for such well-known, highly acclaimed films like Lot🌠 11 rarely come to market.

A remarkably well-preserved example, both segments of the present thꦉree sheet have been assembled and ar✤chivally backed on linen. Featuring the ‘floating-head’ style portraits of the film’s supporting cast in the lower left quadrant, the poster’s blue-green, almost airbrushed background seems to emanate from the bubbling cauldron of Maria Ouspenskaya's Maleva, the plot-advancing Romani mystic oriented in the lower right.

“Even a man who is pure of heart / And says his prayers by night / May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms / And the autumn moon is bright”

The above words form the legend at the core of Universal’s Wolf Man, the first property in their Monster cycle to eschew a literary inspiration, with Curt Siodmak’s original screenplay instead constructing an entirely new, brooding fairy tale from centuries old legend and folklore. The film is even constructed as a fairy tale, utilizing visual codes first established by Disney a decade earlier—almost ironically opening with a shot of a book page detailing lycanthropic affliction. Siodmak’s inventive script was a perfect match for Waggner’s “keen directorial perspective,” with The Hollywood Reporter describing his production “as lavish with atmospheric effects.” The Wolf Man is today considered to be one of the most atmospheric Universal Monster films, which can be credited to the “strangely beautiful” cinematography of Joseph Valentine and Jack Otterson, as well as Robert Boyle’s fog-🤡filled, sumptuous art direction.

The darkly enchanting world of The Wolf Man would be nothing without the werewolf himself, and resident Universal makeup artist and 𒀰horror cycle veteran Jack Pierce was given free rein to create the look of the monster. An amalgam of yak hair and greasepaint applied to a rubber snout, gloves, and slippers turned Lon Chaney Jr. from man to beast in a metamorphosis that took three to four hours each shooting day. On the day the production shot Talbot’s on screen transformation, Chaney’s💧 makeup was applied in approximately 20 stages, with Chaney going to and from set to be filmed in still poses until the werewolf finally appeared.

Despite their significant investment in The Wolf Man, it is widely reported that Universal still maintined reservations about whether American audiences would accept the grotesqueries of the horror genre in the runup to the Second World War. The release of The Wolf Man was even further complicated by the tragedy at Pearl Harbor, which occurred just days before the film's scheduled premiere. Universal committed to releasing the film on time, and The Wolf Man’s immediate popularity soon put all of these apprehensions to✃ bed.

Grossing nearly $1million at the box office, the film was so popular that Universal stretched the franchise across the entire war with Chaney reprising his beastly role in all four Wolf Man sequels, plus a few guest appearances in films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Holding the honor of being the only Universal Monster never to be recast, Chaney’s turn as Larry Ta𒁏lbot has been interpreted by critics as a subliminal reflection of the American war effort (David J. Sk✃al).

Chaney, growing ever-attached to his role with each appearance,🍃 would ever after refer to the legendary wereꦬwolf as his “baby.”