An original black-and-white United Artists press and publicity photograph showing Woody Allen as Miles Monroe during the celebrated giant-produce sequence from his 1973 science-fiction comedy Sleeper.
Allen is pictured on the film’s futuristic farm attempting to handle an enormous peeled banana, with outsized vegetables and agricultural apparatus arranged around him. The deliberately absurd scale of the props transforms an everyday piece of fruit into an unwieldy object and anticipates the sequence’s extended visual joke involving an enormous banana skin.
The original newspaper caption attached to the reverse reads:
“Woody Allen’s search for food leads him to a futuristic farm where the bananas are extremely difficult to handle, and are nearly impossible to eat.”
The scene occurs after Miles encounters gigantic produce growing on a farm. He attempts to peel the canoe-sized banana before the sequence develops into a broad piece of physical comedy based upon the familiar slipping-on-a-banana-skin gag. The American Film Institute notes both the giant produce and the sequence’s deliberate evocation of silent-screen comedy.
Sleeper follows Miles Monroe, a Greenwich Village health-food-shop proprietor who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and revived two centuries later in an authoritarian future. Directed by Woody Allen and co-written with Marshall Brickman, the film combines science-fiction satire with chase sequences, slapstick and visual comedy.
The lower margin carries the original studio statement:
“Copyright © 1973, United Artists Corporation, all rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.”
This printed copyright information identifies the photograph as a contemporary studio-issued publicity still rather than a later photographic reproduction. Although used within a newspaper archive, it is more accurately described as an original United Artists press photograph than as an electronically transmitted wirephoto.
The reverse bears the Shields Gazette Library archive stamp and a filing or publication date of 16 March 1974. It also retains extensive manuscript crop measurements, page-placement instructions and editorial marks, demonstrating its use as a working newspaper image.
This is a genuine period photograph from the original publicity life of Sleeper and not a modern reproduction.
Good condition for an original working press photograph. There is light age-related toning, minor surface marking and general newsroom handling wear. The sheet has gentle curvature, slight edge and corner wear and several small marginal creases and pressure marks. A few small marks and light abrasions are visible within the image and margins.
The photograph retains good contrast and definition, with Allen, the giant banana and the surrounding futuristic props all clearly recorded.
The reverse displays general toning, manuscript crop lines, editorial measurements, page-placement instructions, the original pasted newspaper caption, Shields Gazette Library stamp and date of 16 March 1974. These contemporary working annotations form part of the photograph’s newspaper provenance.
Please study the photographs carefully as they form part of the description.
Film: Sleeper
Actor: Woody Allen
Role: Miles Monroe
Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
Film date: 1973
Archive date: 16 March 1974
Studio/distributor: United Artists Corporation
Photographer: Uncredited
Provenance: Photographic archive of the Shields Gazette
Size: 25.5 × 20.4 cm
Format: Original black-and-white press and publicity photograph
Copyright line: Copyright © 1973 United Artists Corporation; printed in U.S.A.
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Hornseys – Established 1976
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