Rare Poster for a Jack London Film

Naass Teaching Himself to Read / An Odyssey of the North [Three Sheet Poster]

[London, Jack]

Publication: Bosworth, Inc., [1914].

Notes: A terrific large poster for a 1914 silent film based on a Jack London short story. London's story of the same name, published in the January 1900 issue of The Atlantic, is set in Klondike-era Alaska. One of the central characters, Naass, is an Aleut whose great-great grandfather was a shipwrecked White European.

Naass describes himself as "a chief, and the son of a chief, born between a sunset and a rising, on the dark seas, in my father’s oomiak." He left the Aleutian Island and came to mainland Alaska. "I turned away from the ocean which never rests, and went among the lands, where the trees, the houses, and the mountains sit always in one place and do not move. I journeyed far, and came to learn many things, even to the way of reading and writing from books." This last is the basis for the image on the poster.

Hobart Bosworth wrote (with Hettie Grey Baker), directed, and starred in the film version. The poster shows Bosworth as Naass—but looking rather more indigenous than he does in photographs—sitting on a dock and writing in a child's school workbook. The image is a more sympathetic depiction of a Native American that was common at the time.

The film was released on September 3, 1914, by Paramount Pictures. The upper right corner includes an "Authenticated Film" logo for authorized adaptations of Jack London's work. This logo may have resulted from the fact that competing film versions of The Sea Wolf were released in 1913. Bosworth was London's preferred actor and director for film adaptations.

This is a three-sheet movie poster, measuring 42-1/4 by 82 inches, assembled from two large stone lithographs on paper, mounted to a cloth backing.

Edition + Condition: An exceptional example, linen backed with only minor restoration in the margins and the tiniest bit of overpainting to the yellow background at the top. A rare poster.

Item No: #362105

Price: $2,500