NEW YORK, NY.- Paddle8 today announced The Oscar Goes to: Posters, a sale of iconic film posters celebrating nearly sixty years of cinematic artwork. Timed to the 90th Academy Awards, the commemorative sale features posters of blockbusters including Rebecca by Alfred Hitchcock winner of Best Picture in 1940 and Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger winner of Best Picture in 1969. Other celebrated film posters showcased in the sale include Star Wars (1977), Bullitt (1968), 2001: Space Odyssey (1968), The Hustler (1961), All About Eve (1950) and Cabaret (1972).

SALE HIGHLIGHTS:

Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger (1969)
Midnight Cowboy is a groundbreaking film that changed the Hollywood landscape forever. The first and only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture and Best Director, it features controversial and transgressive themes of prostitution, homosexuality, drug abuse and revolutionized mainstream cinema in the 1970s. The film’s pioneering gay characters broke barriers and director John Schlesinger was the first openly gay Director to win an Oscar. Admired for its striking artwork by Waldemar Swierzy, this poster has become one of the most sought-after and expensive Polish movie posters.

Bullitt by Peter Yates (1968)
Widely regarded as one of the best films of the 1960’s, Bullitt was nominated for two Academy Awards and won Best Editing, likely due to Frank P. Keller's superb cutting of one of the most exciting car chases in movie history, clocking in at almost 11 minutes. This bold and impressive 7-foot tall poster, featuring a full-length Steve McQueen, is one of the rarest and most sought-after poster formats for this title.

Cabaret by Bob Fosse (1972)
Cabaret was nominated for a total of ten Academy Awards and went on to win eight, including Best Actress for Liza Minnelli and Best Director for Bob Fosse in 1973 – the last two of this category to win for a musical until last year’s La La Land wins. Wiktor Gorka's striking and confrontational swastika poster design for the Polish release of the movie hints at the musical’s dark Nazi undertones.

Star Wars by George Lucas (1977)
George Lucas' first film was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 1978, winning six plus a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects. Forty years later, the series remains one of the most successful film franchises of all time, with all nine films to date receiving Oscar nominations. The Last Jedi is nominated for four awards this year, including Original Score for John Williams, who won the same award for the first film back in 1978. The composer is the most nominated living person in Oscar history, with a total of 51 Oscar nominations. When the studio realized how successful the first film was going to be, they commissioned Tom Chantrell to create this bold, action packed design for the British campaign. Chantrell often used his family as models for his poster artwork; for this design, his wife posed as Princess Leia in their garden with a plastic sword. Considered the best poster artwork created for the film, it has become synonymous with the franchise. Weeks after this poster was issued in the UK, Star Wars was nominated for ten Oscars, won 7, and the poster was reprinted with the Oscar credits. This is the rare pre-Oscar version that is most prized by collectors.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968)
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 ground breaking Sci-Fi masterpiece was nominated for four Academy Awards and won for Best Special Effects. The film regularly features on lists of top Oscar snubs, having not even been nominated for Best Picture. The film has achieved cult status all the same with it’s epic themes of existentialism, technology and humanity. Having been commissioned by NASA to document the space program, artist Robert McCall was the obvious choice to design four artworks for the 2001: A Space Odyssey marketing campaign. With its iconic centrifuge design, this is one of the rarest posters for the film, as it was only issued to theatres showing the film in Cinerama format, of which there were only about 100 in the U.S.

Rebecca by Alfred Hitchcock (1940)
Nominated for 11 awards in 1941 and going on to win two, Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood production Rebecca remains one of only three suspense thrillers in the history of the Oscars, and the only Hitchcock film, to have won a Best Picture award. Producer David O. Selznick was the first to produce two consecutive winners of the Best Picture award, having won for Gone With The Wind the previous year. This poster for the Argentinean release of the movie features painterly portraits of stars Joan Fontaine and Lawrence Olivier, based on the almost identical artwork of the original US release poster.