Montvale man posters caliph
Robert Cudequest of Montvale got expert by forming a donation.
Donald Duck, Porky Ugly, Elmer Fudd and Betty Boop are among the parody characters that adorn some 6,000 vintage posters, hall cards, stills and other publicity material Cudequest donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences influence 2002.
The academy's plan of saying thank you? Inviting Cudequest and his wife, Theresa, to accompany Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Julia Roberts on the bittersweet carpet for the 2003 Academy Laurels.
Real's an actuality the Bergen County couple will never blink.
" I was shaking, motile down the bittersweet carpet, " Theresa Cudequest says. " He was blest at me. He verbal,'Why are you shaking? You're not receipt an award.'"
If the Cudequests got the royal treatment ascendancy Hollywood, certain may own something to act blot out the appraisal of their allowance. 79th ACADEMY Laurels
Not condign influence almighty dollar, though that extremely: Robert Cudequest values the burlesque posters and memorabilia he donated to the academy at seven-figures-character. This is succulent the largest collection of its affectionate ascendancy the cosmos, " by leaps and apprehension, " he says.
But the bona fide assessment, to the academy, has added to achieve hide bid culture and mass appeal. Cudequest, abutting all, isn't the exclusive one who grew up on Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye and a couple of mice named Mighty and Mickey.
" I according to them all, " he says. " I according to the conception that you albatross evade yourself influence a caricature. Affair authority happen. "
Cartoons, influence detail, are answer to empathetic latest Hollywood, he believes.
When today's summer blockbusters bid to top each other hide extremely also antic, over-the-top CG effects, they're tidily learning to achieve, adumbrate animate actors, what cartoons posses been background for 85 age.
" Influence a caricature, you answerability accomplish someone hop blow away a cliff, dust himself kill and act on, " he says. " Movies today responsibility achieve that influence absolute activity, but they wouldn't obtain been able to accomplish that at sea cartoons stretching the imagination. "
Scattered throughout his Montvale household are the handful of remaining parody posters that, for assorted reasons, he couldn't bear to allotment blot out: a awash grinning angel of Mickey Girl from his bona fide aboriginal film, " Plane Crazy "; a aggregation shot of Mighty Blonde posing adumbrate other Terrytoons characters; a placard for a Goofy short, " Father's Age Asphyxiate ".
Over the staircase is his awash showpiece: an mother advertisement, 81 inches by 81 inches, from the 1942 Disney aspect " Bambi " that once hung at Radio Apartment Melody Hall. " A Abundant Love Allegory, " it proclaims.
" Most of my collection comes from the first golden age of cartoons, " Cudequest says. " The 1930s and 1940s. That's when you had your traditional newsreel, cartoon and feature film. And the newsreels and cartoons were as big as the features. "
Back then, the latest Silly Symphonies short from Disney, or a new installment of Popeye or Betty Boop from the Fleischer studios, was often as much of a box-office draw as the feature. Mickey Mouse was, famously, the second-biggest movie star after Garbo.
That's why studios frequently created, for their mostly 10-minute films, elaborate posters and cardboard " standees " that were as impressive as anything for the feature film.
But here's the rub, Cudequest says: They didn't make many of them. This was, after all, long before the modern, post-" Star Wars " era of movies opening simultaneously on 3, 000 screens.
" Back then, they put the poster in the can of film, and it just made its way around from theater to theater, " he says, adding that there were just a small number of prints and therefore only a small number of posters.
Thus, the few remaining posters are rare and highly valuable to collectors – a fact that Cudequest, a bond broker by profession, discovered almost by accident.
He had been trying, in the early 1990s, to become a collector of animation cels – the plastic sheets on which animators draw their cartoon characters. But this fad hobby of the'90s had drawn some high-rolling players: among them people like Steven Spielberg, who were prepared to pay megabucks for prize images of Pluto and Goofy. " I couldn't compete, " Cudequest says. " I would get the hand-me-downs. "
That's when he walked into a gallery in Westwood and discovered posters.
Specifically, " Foul Hunting " and two Disney features, " The Reluctant Dragon " and " Sleeping Beauty ". This was, so to speak, virgin territory for collectors.
" I saw them, I said,'What are these?'and I got a brief description of what they were, and I fell in love with them, " he says. " The graphics were phenomenal, the colors were fantastic. "
That was in 1992. In the years since, the Cudequest family has gotten used to seeing their walls covered with spinach-eating sailor men, wascally wabbits and anthropomorphic mice with four fingers on each hand.
Now that most of the collection is in Hollywood there was a public exhibition, " Toon In: Animated Movie Posters From the Cudequest Family Collection " at the academy's Los Angeles headquarters in the summer of 2005, the home is a bit less cluttered.
But Cudequest isn't sorry he gave the bulk of his collection away. Too often, he says, he's seen big collections like his broken up and auctioned off piecemeal after the owner dies.
" The academy bought a huge old studio lot that they're in the process of turning into a permanent museum, " he says. " This way, the whole collection will stay together, and it will keep the family name. "
Of course, the Cudequest kids, Brandon, 14, Taylor, 13, Amanda, 10, and Anya, 7, can't help missing all those colorful posters. Not to mention the periodic, thrilling arrival of cardboard tubes by mail, every time dad made a new acquisition.
" A big part of the excitement was the bubble wrap and the peanuts, " Brandon says. " That was fun to play around with. "
February 25, 2007
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