Best Of

On researching Australia daybills over a very long period of time something that stands out to me is the number of Australian daybills that images have not surfaced for. One can understand daybills  printed up to 1949 being scare allowing for World War 11 paper shortages and other factors. I was once told by a person who had worked for a major film distributor that loads of unused Australian daybills, one sheets and other film paper were taken to the dump and disposed of reguarly.Personally about twenty five years ago I approached a second hand shop and was told by the owner she had only a few months before also dumped a lot of film posters as she thought they were of no commercial value. 

I have been looking into Blake Films 1950 & 1960 releases and Regent Films 1960 releases in particular and am amazed at how small the number of daybill titles printed for them have surfaced to date. Some of the missing titles include Chimes At Midnight, The Umbrellas Of Cherboug, Jack The Ripper, Only The Valiant ( re-release ). I am wondering in being small independent companies their print runs were less than the majors knowing bookings would be a lot less that the major distributors would generally receive. It is often said a lot of posters are hoarded by collectors but in the case of  Blake and Regent there titles are not extremely collectible due to lesser known titles with duotone and  less attractive artwork.