Lobby Card for Tamango: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A lobby card for the film Tamango printed on off-white paper. The top left corner reads "Dorothy/ Dandridge". Below that reads "You're the only woman/ I want to live with…/ I'll give up every-/ thing if you will stay!" Below the writing, a woman is depicted lying down wearing a red dress with her right leg and thigh slightly exposed from a slit in the dress. Her right arm is bent at a 45-degree angle. She is looking at a man to the right of her who is sitting wearing a white shirt with his left sleeve rolled up above his elbow. Above the man and woman's head text reads "Curt/ Jürgen’s." To the right of the text and main depiction, is a smaller depiction surrounded by a dark brown border. At the top of the depiction in blue ink it reads "If he finds us alone.../ he'll kill you!" Below that text, to the left depicts a woman in a red dress. To the right there is a man with a green jacket grabbing the woman by her wrist. Below that vignette is another vignette also surrounded by dark brown boarder with blue texts that says "you're nothing but/ White man's trash!" Below the color images starting at the middle left of the card it reads "Adventure as Bold and Daring as the Casting!" To the right of the sentence is a little book tilted to the left. The book title reads "Prosper/ Merimee/ Tamango." To the right of the book also in brown letters it says "The story they said could never be filmed!" In orange letters below that text reads "Tamango." Below that, a man is depicted in chains while a woman grasps on to him. Behind them are a group of people walking in a single file line. To the far right there is a ship off in the distance. To the right of the ship over a black background in yellow letters it reads "Cinema Scope." At the bottom of the lobby card is a black rectangle stretching across the length of the page. Directly below that, in dark letters it says" Jean Servais * Roger Hanin * and introducing Alex Cressan * directed by John Berry * a VITALITE Presentation * a HAL ROACH Release * in COLOR by MOVIE LAB." The word "COLOR" is in orange. Starting from the bottom left corner of the lobby card is a piece of tape that runs from corner to corner. Starting at the top right corner of the lobby card is another piece of tape that runs to the bottom corner and overlaps with the piece of tape that is running across the bottom. On the back of the lobby card there is a darker square piece of tape about halfway down the card aligned to the left. Adjacent to that on the opposite side of the card is a smaller rectangular piece of the same colored tape.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1958
• Distributed by: Vitalite Films
• Directed by: John Berry, American, 1917 - 1999
• Subject of: Dorothy Dandridge, American, 1922 - 1965
• Subject of: Curt Jurgens, Austrian, 1915 - 1982
• Subject of: Jean Servais, Belgian, 1910 - 1976
• Subject of: Alex Cressan
• Type: lobby cards
• Medium: ink on paper (fiber product)
• Dimensions: H x W: 11 × 13 15/16 in. (27.9 × 35.4 cm)
• Place used: New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Entertainers
• Topic: Film
• Topic: Independent films
• Topic: Trans-Atlantic slave trade
• Object number: 2013.118.142.1
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.