Chas F Thompson Scenic Design Co - Design Template #110 for Advertising Front or Fire Curtain 1920s AP1777

In the highly competitive world of scenic painting and design companies when America's legit theaters and vaudeville houses were booming before the depression and talking pictures dealt many of them a death blow, the name Chas F Thompson was on the masthead of two of these companies.

This item, this genuine curiosity, probably a salesman's sample, is a fascinating throwback, and also belongs to the history of advertising as well as that of the theater. It's a design for a front curtain that could carry advertising from local businesses in a place where it would be sure to find eyes before the lights went down and the curtain went up (and at intermission!), thereby creating extra revenue for the theater owner.

The best of these went the extra mile in providing an exciting general scene in which each smaller two-dimensional "billboard" would be dotted about, much in the manner of an advent calendar, which usually would be an exciting view of a city of the future, as in this case. Check out the zeppelin on this one!

We have added a photograph of one of the actual surviving curtains, very similar in design to what this template is suggesting. As the slogan stamped on this blueprint says: " An Advertisement That Triumphs By Repetition."

Measures 15 1/2" x 21 1/4"

Some minor edge wear.