THE MOVIE ART OF FRANK McCARTHY

THE MOVIE ART OF
FRANK McCARTHY

ARTICLES

SELLING BOND

The artists behind the outrageous movie poster ideas that convinced us nobody did it better.

BY STEPHEN REBELLO

Red-hot colors... phallic guns pointing north... the suave man in evening clothes, sporting the "stud-can't-help-it" grin... half-clad pneumatic lovelies melting over him... underwater slugfests, jet-packs, and marauding choppers... slyly suggestive copy lines... "James Bond does it everywhere"... "Nobody does it better." Ticket-selling? Absolutely. Influential? Doubtless. Sexist? Sure. But such hyped-up imagery and double-entendres have been the stock-in-trade of 16 movie poster promotions for James Bond adventures beginning with DR. NO (1962).

To say that fans and memorabilia collectors hotly pursue posters is about like saying Goldfinger enjoyed ingots. The current catalogue for Cinemonde, San Francisco's upscale movie poster emporium, demands $250 for a DR. NO 14" x 36" insert. No wonder vintage Bond posters fetch such sums. The series itself is the all-time movie success story and the illustration talent behind the Bond advertisements ranks among the best in the business.

In 1961, David Chasman, then director of marketing and advertising for United Artists, hired Mitchell Hooks and Joseph Caroff to design the "007 logo" for DR. NO. A modestly budgeted item shot in Jamaica, the movie starred a 32 year-old Scotsman who earned $15,000 to play a shrewd, strapping secret service agent. Lighting struck everyone involved: DR. NO became a runaway hit; Sean Connery earned stardom; David Chasman is now a top production executive; Joseph Caroff designed the striking poster campaign for Martin Scorcese's THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.

In promoting FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) and GOLDFINGER (1964), Chasman and United Artists abandoned illustration for posters in a crisp photographic style. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli had posters for the latter film designed in England by the late, influential British art director Robert Brownjohn.

In 1965, Donald Smolen superceded David Chasman as worldwide marketing and advertising executive for United Artists. Since then, Smolen has played a key role in the creation of eight Bond campaigns — from THUNDERBALL forward. Trained at the Beaux Arts in Paris, Smolen apprenticed in the exploitation art department at 20th Century-Fox, where he illustrated posters for such movies as AN AMERICAN GUERIRILLA IN THE PHILIPINES (1950). With UA until 1974, later that year Smolen opened the Smolen, Smith and Connelly agency, consulting not only for the Bond pictures, but also the marketing masterminds behind the ad campaigns for such projects as THE OMEN (1976), STAR WARS (1977), APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), and EXCALIBUR (1981).

"With the Bond pictures, we set out to sell — in a stylish, classy way — the girls, the action, and, to whatever extent we could, the gadgetry particular to the film," recalled Smolen, a precise, cordial man in a pin-neat studio. "The central 'idea' was always this: Bond is cool in the midst of the beautiful girls, the villains out to get him, and the chaos bombarding him. For the illustrators, we used only the best and, in the United Artists of those days, everyone was willing to spend the money to get the best. Fortunately, the best were also friends: Robert McGinnis, Frank C. McCarthy, and Bob Peak."

Consider the oeuvre of 63 year-old Cincinnati, Ohio-born painter Robert McGinnis, who, with six such assignments to his credit, might be crowned king of the James Bond posters. "Painting provocative, seductive, elegant women brought me to the Bond people," said McGinnis, whose canvases glow with alluring femme fatales — a key sales element of the kiss-kiss-bang-bang factor.

Bond posters that boast what McGinnis terms his "women drawn with a high-fashion edge" are THUNDERBALL (1965), ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969, main figures only; action vignettes were painted by Frank C. McCarthy), DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971), LIVE AND LET DIE (1973), THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974), and the key figure of the sexy dazzler in MOONRAKER (1979).

Duly impressed by McGinnis' productivity (1500 paper-back book covers) and his illustrative way with women, in 1965 art director Smolen set him and another highly skilled painter to work on the THUNDERBALL poster campaign. McGinnis explained, "Frank McCarthy was known for action paintings, so before doing our painting, we were assigned to go to London to meet [producers] Broccoli and Saltzman, Sean Connery, and see the rushes."

The pizzazz of the McGinnis-McCarthy THUNDERBALL posters proved to be a key element in a stop-at-nothing publicity blitz that included the launching of a guy with a jet-pack over Times Square. When THUNDERBALL grossed $27 million, Smolen and United Artists reteamed McGinnis and McCarthy. But some later Bond assignments posed greater challenges for the poster illustrators than the first. "Most of the other movies were not that far along in the filming," explained McGinnis in his studio in the Southwest. "So I did the artwork from stills or my imagination. Don [Smolen] would give us rough sketches and say, 'Here we want Bond, and there, the women.' I'd submit drawings for approval, then do a finished painting in tempera with casein white."

With movie poster work of the late '60s and '70s reportedly paying illustrators in the high five figures, freelancer McGinnis considered those assignments the "prizes of the business." The painter recalled, "The time things didn't go smoothly was DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, which was down to the wire." Art director Donald Smolen picked up the narrative. "I had asked Bob to surround Bond completely in pulchritude. Literally the day the poster was to go to press at National Screen Service in Cleveland, someone at UA looked at the painting and said, 'How can the figure of Bond be lower than the two girls?'" [McGinnis recalled that "someone" as Sean Connery's agent.] Under pressure, Smolen applied cosmetic surgery to the McGinnis painting. Laughed, McGinnis at the recollection, "Luckily, Don was a good illustrator. Most people don't notice, but if you look carefully at the poster Connery has and awfully long neck."

Posters for LIVE AND LET DIE (1973), are a highlight of the collaboration of McGinnis and Smolen's UA marketing team. "One of the really great McGinnis pieces," observed the art director of the "tarot cards, beautiful women, and crocodiles" motif that was to prove far more dynamic than the debut of Roger Moore as 007.

In the late '70s, McGinnis abandoned movie art to paint Western canvases. Admitted the artist, whose work is represented by a prestigious Southwest gallery, one film assignment might tempt him to backslide: "For a time, the Bond pictures got too casual, too tongue-in-cheek and the adventure went out of them. But now, I'd love to go all-out with one more exotic, exciting James Bond poster."

Frank C. McCarthy is another legendary American painter and brilliant colorist who has three times applied his considerable talents to selling Bonds. The zingy advertisements for two of the best entries in the cycle — THUNDERBALL (1965) and, particularly, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) — attest to the gifts of McCarthy for explosive detail and for heroic men-in-action.

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) is a quintessential Bond campaign that its art director ranks as a pinnacle of the series. "Frank is now one of America's great Western painters and I remember sending him to London to watch them shoot the volcano sequences," said Donald Smolen. "Frank took the idea that Bond can do anything and painted a phenomenal poster of 007 walking horizontally along the volcano walls with an Atlas missile being launched from it. We opened that picture simultaneously at the Astor and Victoria Theatres in New York and ran Frank's painting on a billboard an entire city block on Times Square.

Hundreds of magazine covers, national ads, and movie posters attest to the gifts of Robert Peak as one of the most distinctive contemporary illustrators. Peak plays dexterously with shadow and light, candy-colored expressionistic backgrounds, and stylized portraits that evoke the drama of a bygone Hollywood. Bond aficionados love Peak best for his THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) posters. "We were making a fortune with every Bond film advertised with posters by Bob McGinnis and Frank McCarthy," recalled Donald Smolen. "But I called in Bob Peak when someone said, 'We want something we've never had before.'"

Of the demand for his talents by movieland advertising art departments, 61 year-old Colorado-born Peak can well boast, "I turn down ten times as much as I do." Since 1961, the artist — reportedly at fees upwards of $30,000 — has enlivened the marketing of over 100 films, including ROLLERBALL (1975), SUPERMAN (1978), and STAR TREK (1979).

Illustrator Daniel Gouzee handled the artwork for the Bond posters for MOONRAKER (1979), OCTOPUSSY (1983) and A VIEW TO A KILL (1985). Posters for FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981) and THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987) featured photos. The movie work of the New York-based Gouzee also includes such posters as ENEMY MINE (1985) and THE MISSION (1986), both collaborations with Donald Smolen and Associates.

The shutdown of UA and its takeover by MGM — the fate of which itself now hangs in the balance — had thrown into turmoil the poster campaign for the 16th Bond. Late last summer, producer "Cubby" Broccoli hired Smolen to create "teaser" campaigns for Christmas and Easter for the movie then called LICENCE REVOKED. "After 16 pictures," observed Smolen, "there was fear that Bond might be passe, that the average teenager might say, 'James Bond? Oh, yeah, my dad used to tell me about that.'"

Although Smolen subscribes to the axiom "Don't tamper with success," he nevertheless attempted to jazz-up Bond for audiences hip to the high-impact visual style of the '80s. Smolen also sought to rough up the image of the new 007, Timothy Dalton, as "more tough than glamorous." Collaborating with photographer Douglas Kirkland and illustrator Robert Peak, Smolen contributed to the development of nearly half a dozen poster prototypes. The results ranged from Elle magazine chic (Bond photographed lounging with spectacular female consorts in a tropical setting) to bracingly moody and sinister (Dalton as Dirty Harry by Robert Peak.)

Suddenly, MGM annexed UA. The studio's advertising and publicity director, Gregory Morrison, jettisoned the efforts of Smolen, Kirkland, and Peak. Last winter, MGM shipped to theatres "teaser" posters for the film, retitled LICENSE TO KILL, that were a virtual replay of the by-the-numbers ads for THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987). Now, Morrison is out of MGM and the future of the studio — not to mention the posters of Smolen, Peak, and Kirkland — is anybody's guess. With so much in flux, in-house art director for the Bond company, Saul Cooper, termed the efforts of Smolen and company as "work in progress." It would seem that in Hollywood these days, to paraphrase the theme song, only 007 — and the posters for Bond movies — are forever.

(This article originally appeared in "Cinefantastique", Vol 19, No 5, July 1989).