Insert poster for the film, “Tomorrow- the World!” (1944)
Extent and Medium
Overall: Height: 36.000 inches (91.44 cm) | Width: 14.000 inches (35.56 cm)
Creator(s)
- Lester Cowan Productions, Inc. (Production Company)
- United Artists Corporation (Distributor)
- Ken Sutak (Compiler)
Biographical History
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.
Archival History
The poster was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur
Scope and Content
Insert poster for the film, “Tomorrow, The World!” released by United Artists in December 1944. Insert posters were a popular size of film posters, often framed and used in special, small displays within a theater lobby. The film was based on a popular 1943 Broadway play of the same name, and centers around a 12-year-old member of the Hitler Youth who moves to the United States to live with his American uncle. Despite his parents’ deaths in a concentration camp, the young boy is entrenched in Nazi ideology, and is arrogant, insulting, and outwardly antagonistic towards his uncle’s Jewish fiancée. The adults debate over the best way to handle the boy, and by extension, Nazi Germany. After a more physical tactic ends in disaster, the characters find that a compassionate and loving approach breaks through. This serves as a metaphor for how to treat the ordinary German citizens living under the brutality of the Nazi regime. “Tomorrow, the World!” carries an underlying message that they were unwillingly forced into the Nazi ideology, and the film promotors even suggested that local discussions should held. 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.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Restrictions on use. Copyright status is unknown.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Poster printed on a sheet of rectangular, off-white paper with a narrow border on all four sides. Across the top are two lines of red text and illustrations of three people. In the top left corner is a young man depicted in right profile from the shoulders up, with a bandaged cut on his cheek and a bruise around his right eye. Below him in the center, a man and woman are embracing and looking towards the left side of the frame. All three have blue background shadowing. Below them is a large, dark blue cloud containing the film producer in white and the film title in large yellow text, surrounded by white accent lines. Below, on the right side, is a block of film credits printed in red. On the left side is a circular wreath made of two, green, leafed branches tied together with a ribbon at the bottom, with black text in the center. Below the wreath is a sketch of three fighting boys and additional film credits printed in green. In the bottom right corner are two black-and-white photographic stills. The fist shows a young man aggressively blocking the way of a shorter woman, and the second shows a man carrying the limp body of a young girl. A sketch of a village horizon with mountains in the background across the bottom of the poster. Printing and copyright information is printed in blue text in the bottom margin. The poster is creased into four sections, has several tears along the creases, and a long, vertical strip of tape residue on the center crease where a previous repair attempt was made. There are large tears in the top and upper right edges of the poster, as well as at a few points along the torn creases. Small pinholes extend across the top margin, and one is centered in the bottom margin as well. Depicted: Skip Homeier as Emil Bruckner, Betty Field as Leona Richards, Fredric March as Mike Frame, Agnes Moorehead as Jessie Frame, Joan Carroll as Pat Frame
back, bottom, stamped, red ink : 774
People
- Field, Betty, 1918-1973.
- March, Fredric, 1897-1975.
- Homeier, Skip.
- Carroll, Joan, 1931-2016.
- Moorehead, Agnes, 1900-1974.
Subjects
- Germans in motion pictures.
- United States.
- Film adaptations.
- Jewish women in motion pictures.
- Youth in motion pictures.
- Discrimination in motion pictures.
- National socialism in motion pictures.
- Anti-Nazi movement in motion pictures.
Genre
- Posters
- Object
- Posters.