Meet the Collector: Dwight Cleveland On Turning Hollywood Ephemera into Museum-Worthy History
Chicago-based collector Dwight M. Cleveland’s fascination with collecting began in 1977, when, as a high school senior, a teacher showed him a set of vintage lobby cards, including one particular card from the 1928 Paramount film Wolf Song. He was smitten. “This thing just called out to me, ‘take me home,’” he told Observer. He didn’t know it at the time, but that encounter would kick off a lifelong obsession with rare movie marketing memorabilia.
As collecting categories go, this is a nichey one. Lobby cards—small posters displayed in theaters to promote films—date back to the early silent era and were still part of studio marketing packages in the 1980s. Typically issued in sets of eight, with one title card featuring the film’s title, stars and artwork and seven featuring scene stills, they’re relatively rare because they were intended to be disposable. Once a film’s run was over, most ended up in the trash. Those that are still around have found an eager, if small, audience of collectors like Cleveland. Trades were once common; now, in-demand lobby cards sell for six-figure sums.
Over five decades, Cleveland amassed a vast trove of tens of thousands of movie posters, lobby cards and other cinematic ephemera, with a focus on classic Hollywood stars and the Art Deco era. He has owned about 70 percent of the known silent film lobby cards—though not all at the same time—and his archive has included materials related to every Academy Awards Best Picture winner and the top 100 films of all time as rated by the American Film Institute and IMDB. Today, he has winnowed down his collection—once the world’s largest fully curated archive of vintage film ephemera— to about 14,000 items after a series of donations and notable auctions. Last year, highlights from his legendary collection spanning more than 115 years of film history realized over $1.45 million at Heritage Auctions’ Cinema on Paper sale.
What remains can be loosely categorized into two distinct collections. The “Remarkable Women Behind the Camera” collection encompasses more than 10,000 lobby cards from the silent film era when women were producers, directors, screenwriters and more. Because the nitrate film used was inherently unstable, these cards are, in many cases, the only evidence we have of women’s contributions to early film history. There’s also his “Completist” collection of lobby cards from films of the 1920s and ‘30s starring Golden Age greats like Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart.
For Cleveland, the hunt for rare, one-of-a-kind pieces and the thrill of discovery are only part of the appeal. He’s kept at it as long as he has, and invested as much of his time and energy as he has, because of the stories these objects carry, the connections he’s built in the collecting community and the opportunity to contribute to a broader cultural conversation by sharing his holdings. In 2013, he donated more than 1,000 posters to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach mounted “Coming Soon: Film Posters from the Dwight M. Cleveland Collection,” the largest solo exhibition of classic film posters ever. “It was the first time a museum hosted an exclusive exhibition, which was huge for me,” he said. “I’d spent so many years collecting and restoring these pieces, and seeing them up in a museum was incredibly rewarding.” He recently agreed to lend Maria Félix posters to the American University in Paris.
Widely regarded as the authority in his field, Cleveland has done much to elevate early movie posters from disposable marketing tools to museum-worthy objects. He’s also done quite a bit to shape the discourse around the history of film. In 2023, he established the Frederica Sagor Maas Fellowship at Columbia University—named for the youngest female story editor in Hollywood history—which supports historical research on women behind the camera. His book, On Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters, offers a comprehensive look at his passion for the work of the artists who captured the essence of classic cinema so succinctly. (Published by Assouline, it quickly sold out its first printing.) Observer caught up with the collector to learn more about his collecting journey, what it means to deaccession a collection as large as his and his Holy Grail piece.
Can you tell me more about how you got interested in movie posters and lobby cards?
I was 17 and a senior in high school. My art teacher, who was a big collector, had posters all over his studio, office and the hallways. We used to joke about his quirky hobby, but one day, he came to class with a set of lobby cards he had just bought. One of them was from Wolf Song, a 1928 Paramount film with Gary Cooper and Lupe Velez. I fell in love with the color, the Art Deco design and the romantic imagery. At the time, among collectors, everything was traded. There was very little buying and selling. The only shops were in Los Angeles and New York, and after I graduated, I took a gap year in L.A. Armed with my teacher’s want list, I went around saying, “Do you have anything on this list?” I’m asking for Gene Harlow and Marlena, Dietrich and Mae West, and people are like, who is this kid? How does this punk even know who these people are? But it sort of earned me a little bit of respect because I was looking for some higher-end stuff.
How did you start collecting?
After my gap year, I worked for a politician in L.A., which took me to Washington, D.C., where I got to know some people at the Library of Congress, and some of them were collectors. I made some trades, and my collection started to grow from there. Eventually, I made a trade—seven pieces for 10 or something like that—and the Wolf Song was in there. By that time, I had gotten the bug. I really just absolutely loved this stuff.
What role does the hunt play in your collecting?
I’ve spent 50 years hunting stuff down, and the hunt is everything. I love going to flea markets, researching and meeting people who used to own movie theaters. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time connecting with other collectors, and it’s involved a lot of travel all over the world. I’ve been to every continent other than Antarctica hunting these things down, and I’ve met the most interesting people along the way—from guys that live in trailer parks to guys that live at the top of the Pacific Palisades, in Manhattan penthouse apartments and everybody in between. We all just have this bond of loving this movie paper. It’s been very, very rewarding. I’m the high bidder every now and then, but because there are people with more resources than I have, I’ve had to get creative with my acquisitions. The thrill of the chase is what keeps it exciting.
What’s the community of collectors like in this niche?
It’s a small, extremely competitive fraternity. The secrecy in our community is intense; no one ever tells anyone what they’re bidding on or what they’re interested in. It’s all about strategy—smoke and mirrors. You want to keep your intentions hidden, especially when dealing with one-of-a-kind items. It’s an ongoing game of one-upmanship. Those of us who’ve been around a while all know each other from the conventions, the auctions and just dealing with one another, hearing about acquisitions and things like that.
And what kind of prices are people paying for some of those rare items?
The highest prices are commanded by Universal horror posters—think Dracula, Frankenstein and King Kong. A one-sheet from those can go for about half a million dollars. Materials from films like Metropolis have sold privately for over a million. I don’t collect horror, personally; I’ve just used it to trade for other things I want. But if horror is your thing, there’s serious money in it.
So, no horror. What’s your genre?
It all goes back to Wolf Song. That film, that era—I just love Art Deco. The late 1920s and 1930s were a time when movie posters were the focal point of advertising budgets. After that, with the rise of other media, the focus shifted, and the posters weren’t as prioritized. That’s when my collecting shifted into full gear. I started with stars like Greta Garbo, Mae West and Jean Harlow, and it expanded from there.
How did the “Remarkable Women Behind the Camera” collection come about?
One of my favorite pieces is a lobby card I bought at the France Avenue flea market in Hopkins, Minnesota in 1979. It’s Paramount, with a great Deco image, and if you look closely, you can see the name Dorothy Arzner. When I was researching my book, I knew had to include her, but then I asked myself, who is this woman? I’ve been doing this for almost half a century, and I didn’t know who she was. So I started digging, and I found out that Marion Morgan did choreography on a lot of her films, and it turns out that was her partner. Then all these other names started coming out: Jeanie McPherson, Frances Marion, Marion Fairfax, Winifred Dunn—on and on and on. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know who any of these women were, and when I started looking at their filmographies, I realized a lot of them had incredibly important roles. In the early silent era, in the teens, there were a lot of women who wrote, directed, produced and starred in their own films. None of the collectors I knew—even the guys older than me—had ever heard of any of them. So, I went around the country visiting fellow collectors I’d known for decades, and during the first eight months or so, I bought 25,000 lobby cards. I brought them all back to Chicago, alphabetized and archived everything in acid-free materials, and started cataloging. Then I whittled it down to about 10,000 cards where women played a role behind the camera, and that became my focus. Around 2018 and 2019, a lot of my friends would say, Dwight, you’re collecting old dusty paper, you’re living 100 years ago. But with this work, I found a way to step into the 21st Century and make this material relevant to a current audience, and that means everything to me.
Your collection now stands at about 14,000 items. How do you manage it?
I am meticulous about my archiving, and so everything is alphabetized, and it’s in archival bags and backings. That’s all acid-free, and then I keep them in these special boxes, and I do have a warehouse where I keep stuff. (When I had a larger collection, I had three different warehouse spaces, so it wasn’t all in one place.) Some of my favorite things went up on the walls, but my wife never let it get too crazy. A lot of the people who collect this stuff… let’s just say they’re as obsessive as I am, but they aren’t as balanced. Now we live in a 48-story building with big windows, and there’s a lot of sunlight, so I don’t have any posters hanging currently. I’m in what I call “deaccession mode,” where I’ve been giving things away and strategically selling things. I’ve gone through all these different phases as a collector, and I’ve been an archivist and an author and a curator, really shepherding this stuff along this timeline. Now, I’m figuring out where to make donations and when to sell stuff.
Do you see yourself completely stepping away from collecting at some point?
I don’t think I’ll ever be completely out of it. Collecting is in my blood. Even when I think I’m slowing down, I do still find myself bidding on things. I take a lot of heat from my kids and my wife when they catch me bidding. It’s just what I do. I know people all over the world, and I love visiting them on their turf. It’s just part of the culture, you know? I don’t think I’m ever going to be completely divested of this stuff because it’s just in my blood.
Is there a dream piece you’re still searching for?
Oh, absolutely. I have a “Holy Grail” piece I’ve been looking for, but I can’t tell you what it is. I’m actively searching for it, and I know it’s out there. I’ve found so many great pieces over the years, and one day, I’ll find it.