poster

As he neared his hotel, Miller was stopped in his tracks by the visage of Olga Chekhova staring out from a large theater poster a workman was busy plastering above the Cinéma de Vanves. The movie star’s languid eyes locked with Miller’s. “I’d like to see that film,” Miller called up to the man who smiled down warmly from the top of his ladder, “but I don’t have a cent in my pocket.”

When he arrived in Paris in 1930, Henry Miller found the walls of his new city plastered with lurid posters calling for public vigilance against the scourges of syphilis and cancer. Miller was fascinated with the posters and the depiction of the crab in particular may have been an inspiration for the title of his novel, Tropic of Cancer.