Arab print/ Veneer framed. ID help and your thoughts.

I would like to get some ideas on this print and frame.
The print is maybe not that old but I thought maybe someone might be able to Id it. Looks like offset litho on thick cardboard. no signature or printing co.
The frame is a wide wood veneer that i don't know the type of wood.
Measures 21" x 25". nails on corners and sides painted black with black paper on the back.
Any comments and or input would be helpful.
Sell them together or separate?

Mikey

 

Wild-eyed guess -- it looks like an old movie (film) still to me. Perspective-wise it looks like the landscape in the background was painted on a backdrop.

Now if "we" could just figure out which movie (silent film perhaps?).

 

Perhaps one of the Rudolph Valentino movies, but this genre was very popular at the time, so it could just be a generic "Sheik of Araby" thing.

 

I'm seeing "Old Testament" story illustration, but Sheik of Araby sounds good too!

 

It could also be a still (publicity shot) for a theatrical production.

Looks like the man and woman are actually standing on the slightly tattered edge of a cloth backdrop.

 

A lot of "poetic license" here - cacti are fairly rare in Africa.

 

The cactus is the clue.
It is of the 'prickly pear' type used to cultivate the cochineal beetle, and the woman is saying "See the vampire bite marks? If you don't front me the money to expand my cactus farm, I'll suck your blood and you'll wind up like the shiftless, hollow undead husk of my husband standing behind me."

It is from the quickly suppressed 'Desert Movie' moom pitcher starring Errol Flynn, Laurel and Hardy (Stan Laurel played the husband) and Marilyn Monroes's mother (it was this brief Hollywood contact that later enabled Norma Jean to get her first break in pictures) and Bela Lugosi.

The 'mash up' style was long before its time, and the try-out audiences did not know whether they were supposed to laugh, cry or throw chairs. They settled for throwing chairs.

The studio heads buried it in the deepest vault, they fired the director, a young Alfred Hitchcock who vowed to stick strictly to established genres thereafter and this was considered a bit unfair as the real blame lay with the Producer, W.C. Fields, who was as drunk as a skunk during the whole two week production period and to whom the bizarre casting, chaotic but at least extremely cheap storyline and wildly inappropriate use of the star's talents was entirely attributable.

You have a rare piece of Hollywood memorabilia and it is just a great shame that the movie, whose sad story was so well hidden, is one that few other than myself and a couple of descendants of the original production staff know about this minimising its popular appeal.

 

Af, thanks for the laugh!

... I do not think this is a photograph. There is a chance that it is based on one. To me it just looks like a print in sepia, based on a painting.

 

Scroll down on this page to see a color version of this picture. They are associating it with the Biblical story of Ruth:

http://theperfectpiece.org.uk/2014/03/26/674/

 

Oooo Lookie here what I found . . .
http://www.rubylane.com/item/754361-A-159/Religious-Hires-Root-Beer-Advertising-Donaldson

 

Here we go... This page says the original is "Ruth and Naomi" by Philip Hermogenes Calderon, 1920: [NOTE: this date is incorrect. The date might be for the print, but the museum listing from the BBC says that the painting was from 1886.]


http://www.womeninthebible.net/paintings_ruth.htm

 

Advertising root beer? Who would have thought?

 

And that one has a longer title, "The Parting of Ruth and Naomi." I was thinking the taller one was a man... now I see that she's a woman.

 

The original painting is in the collections of the National Museums Liverpool:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/ruth-and-naomi-96966

 

A ha! I thought it looked familiar.

 

While I now understand that that is woman, I still don't see that it is a woman!

 

I agree. I looked again after I wrote that and realized that it doesn't look like a woman after all.

 

That will be either Mahlon or Boaz (1st and 2nd husband respectively) on the left with Ruth, and Naomi (Ruth's MIL) on the right.

The frame looks to be in good shape. Usually the veneer on those things is chipped and pealing.

 

Apparently, Naomi is Ruth's MIL -- I don't think I would've looked at my MIL that way (plus she is shorter than I) or hugged her like that even though I do love her! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ruth

 

Bob and I cross-posted -- I thought the hubby looked like a servant...oooh so many ways this pic could be interpreted today.