Paradise Alley (Original photograph from the 1958 film)

N.p.: Sutton Pictures, 1962. Vintage studio still photograph from the 1958 film. "Paradise Alley" premiered in 1958 but was not released until 1962.

Czech-born director Hugo Haas wrote, produced, and directed his own swan song, quite the Hollywood movie, an autobiographical homage to the cinema he knew. The cast featured film veterans from old Hollywood such as silent film star Corinne Griffith, vaudeville star Billy Gilbert, Keystone Cop Chester Conklin and Wicked Witch of the West herself, Margaret Hamilton.

Aging European director Rudolph Agnus (Haas) moves to the seedy Los Angeles neighborhood known as Paradise Alley, a crowded home of bickering tenants. Finding a friend in Mr. Gregory (Chester Conklin,) a retired cameraman, Agnus proposes making a movie with the residents as actors, to unite them and stop their petty bickering. Using a camera with no film and a cucumber made up to look like a microphone, Agnus plan succeeds. When a studio hears of the project, they offer to bankroll it, enabling Agnus to actually make his film.

8 x 10 inches. Near Fine.