[THE ROMEO AND JULIET FILM PREMIERE IN LEVANTINE IZMIR] Romeo ve Juliyet, Ilk defa! Yeni’nin muhterem müdavimlerine 1943 yılbaşı armağanı [i.e., Romeo and Juliet. For the first time! A New Year's 1943 gift to the esteemed patrons of Yeni Cinema]

COMPLETE TITLE: [THE ROMEO AND JULIET FILM PREMIERE IN LEVANTINE IZMIR] Romeo ve Juliyet, Ilk defa! Yeni’nin muhterem müdavimlerine 1943 yılbaşı armağanı. [Verso] Kanunsuz Şehir: Bill Elliott, Bağdad Hırsızı, etc. [i.e., Romeo and Juliet. For the first time! A New Year’s 1943 gift to the esteemed patrons of Yeni Cinema [Verso] Lawless City (Bill Elliott), The Thief of Baghdad, etc.].

[ROMEO AND JULIET].

Yeni Sinema / Yeniyol Matbaasi, Izmir, 1943.

Original lithograph broadside. Double-sided printing. Housed in a brown wooden frame. 46,5 x 31,5 cm (broadside’s sizes). In Turkish. Originally postal stamped. Illustrated. Slight chippings on extremities, tear on the folded trace. Otherwise, a very good copy.

Extremely rare and seemingly unrecorded illustrated advertisement poster of the first screening of the “Romeo and Juliet” film in the important Levantine city Izmir in Turkey, which is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by William Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings. The film stars Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, and the supporting cast features John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, and Andy Devine.

This rare poster, produced for the New Year of 1943, announces the screening of the first film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to be shown in the cinemas of Izmir, which premiered on 8 January 1943 at the Yeni Sinema in the Basmane district. Printed in a double-sided lithographic format, the poster was distributed and displayed in various parts of the city.

While the recto features Romeo and Juliet, the verso carries advertisements for several other films then being screened, including the American Western Lawless City starring Bill Elliott, as well as The Thief of Baghdad, Polis Hafiyesi, Kan Vergisi, and Centilmen Gangster.

“The first public film screenings in Izmir took place in 1896 at the Apollon Club in the Frank quarter, only one year after the famous projection by Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière at the Grand Café in Paris, and in the very same year that cinema first arrived in Istanbul.

At the time, Izmir (Smyrna), was one of the most important commercial Levantine ports of Asia Minor and among the most cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman Empire. The city possessed a richly diverse population composed of Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, and Levantines. This diversity was also reflected in its urban layout, with distinct neighbourhoods associated with the various communities. The Frank quarter, inhabited primarily by European Levantines and other affluent non-European elites, functioned as the city’s principal commercial and cultural centre.

The waterfront promenade known as the Kordon formed the heart of Levantine social life, lined with cafés, social clubs, assembly halls, theatres, hotels, and foreign consulates. Contemporary European travellers frequently referred to Smyrna as "the little Paris of the East". It was along the Kordon that the first permanent cinema halls began to appear from 1908 onward. One contemporary source notes that within a stretch of scarcely twenty meters between the Kraemer Pub and the Sporting Club there were no fewer than four separate cinema venues. Among the earliest motion-picture establishments in the city were Ciné Pallas, Lux, Cinematographe Paris, Pathé, and the Théâtre de Smyrne. After nearly all the Kordon cinemas were destroyed in the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922, new cinemas in the modern sense began to be established in the city shortly after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. Among them were Elhamra Cinema, Yeni Sinema, Milli Sinema, Tayyare Cinema, and Lale Cinema, among others. (Source: Hafiza Izmir online).

As of March 2026, we couldn’t trace any copies in OCLC.