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Under the Top, the 1919 Donald Crisp silent romantic circus comedy ("Gosh! Aint he handsome"; "Deleted by censor"; "Just for pansy"; "Splendor of the professor upsets Jimmy"; "By John Emerson and Anita Loos"; about a small town young man who visits the circus and falls in love with the tightrope walker after he saves her from a gang of thieves, and after the circus leaves town, he starts practicing in his backyard, so that he can join the circus as a tightrope walker and be with the girl he loves!) starring Fred Stone, Ella Hall, Lester Le May, Sylvia Ashton, and James Cruze. Note that Fred Stone was a vaudeville and live theater legend, but is sadly forgotten today, except by major theater history buffs. He was born in 1873, and by the turn of the century, he was the leading actor in live theater plays that toured the country, and in 1902, he played the Scarecrow in the first stage version of The Wizard of Oz, a role he repeated for many years. In 1918, he first appeared in a movie, and although he appeared in a total of 19 movies, he mainly stayed loyal to the stage. He was great friends with many Hollywood legends including Will Rogers, and when Annie Oakley died, she left her unfinished autobiography to Stone! He was critically injured in an airplane crash in 1929, and was told he would never dance again, but made a nearly full recovery. In 1923, the creator of Raggedy Ann wrote a stage play for Stone, where the Scarecrow met Raggedy Ann, but it was never produced. Stone and his daughter did play in a musical where he was Raggedy Andy and she was Raggedy Ann, with music by Jerome Kern. In the mid 1930s, when older actors were having much success at Paramount, Paramount hired Stone with a great fanfare, announcing that he would be appearing in a number of movies, but that really didn't materialize. Stone was certainly a remarkable man, and a movie should be made of his life. Note that this is a "lost" film, which means that no surviving copies are thought to exist.
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Important Added Info: Note that, as noted above, Fred Stone was a legend of vaudeville and the theater. But he only appeared in six silent movies, and movie paper from those is incredibly rare! This is the only one-sheet we have ever had from one of his silent movies. It was auctioned in 2017 and now that very same poster has been reconsigned to us for this auction so it is still the only example we have ever seen! In the late 1910s through the early 1930s, MGM (and sometimes Paramount and a couple of other studios) would often make a regular one-sheet for a movie and, instead of a second style regular one-sheet, would instead make a special "rotogravure" one-sheet. Named after the rotogravure picture sections at the time popular in Sunday newspapers, these one-sheets would be printed in a single color, often sepia, but sometimes other colors, and they would usually incorporate pictorial images from the movie combined in a montage fashion. Very few rotogravure one-sheet have survived, since they were printed on the same paper stock used in newspapers of the time, and the paper is very fragile and often darkens. Also note that this one-sheet measures 28" x 42 1/2" [71 x 108 cm].

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