I remember quietly stealing into my dad's small studio to look at his work. When he was up there we weren't allowed to disturb him, but when he went downtown to deliver a job or teach, I knew I could sneak a peek. I was pretty small at the time. I would sit there, flipping through the drawers of movie stars and monsters, and the dinosaurs which were my favorites. My father, Reynold Brown, had started working for the Hollywood movie industry in 1951 — a year after I was born. As I got older, I grew to admire his work and, as would any kid, I thought he was the only illustrator doing movie posters... or at least all the best ones were his.

Then one day a shock. I had come back from Hawaii after service in the Marines. Dad's health had been declining since a stroke in 1976 and I decided to help with the family business. His original movie paintings had sat in the garage. Old stars the likes of Richard Widmark, Rod Steiger and Gregory Peck stared out. We moved to Nebraska and began the slow process of identifying all the movies on which he had worked. A chance encounter resulted in some of Dad's work being included in an exhibition at the Lancaster City Museum, CA, and there I experienced another surprise. In the exhibition was a poster for the film DR. ZHIVAGO. I had long accepted that my dad had done this poster. After all, we had many of the original drawings for it and the brownline reproduction proofs. But on the bottom of this poster was the signature of another artist whom I had come to know by name and reputation — Howard Terpning.

Back at home, another hero came before me. I found a poster of SOLOMON AND SHEBA showing Gina Lollobrigida caught in the embrace of Yul Brynner; surrounding them was biblical mayhem Hollywood-style. A signature search found "McCarthy" — the same Frank McCarthy many people know today for his action paintings of the American West. Likewise on a magnificent poster for the film CAMELOT, I found the name Robert Peak.

What kind of influence have these artists had on the film industry? I asked Stephen Rebello, author of the movie poster book Reel Art that question. [1] "Outstanding poster work conveys the essence of a film in a single compelling image that has wit, clarity and vitality... Of the post-war illustrators, Reynold Brown, Howard Terpning, Bob Peak and Frank McCarthy are among the most skilled because their work connects instantly with the viewer."

Just how great the impact of these men has been can be gauged, at least in part, by the volume of work they did. As a freelance artist in Los Angeles, CA, Reynold Brown illustrated between 250 and 300 movies from 1950 to 1970, among them KING OF KINGS, the John Wayne epic THE ALAMO, Gregory Peck in THE WORLD IN HIS ARMS, and James Stewart in THE FAR COUNTRY. Howard Terpning did over 80 posters while living in New York, including DR. ZHIVAGO, the magnificent re-release poster for GONE WITH THE WIND, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Frank McCarthy also did about 80 posters, counting BEAU GESTE, THE BLUE MAX, THE GREAT ESCAPE and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE among them.

Brown, Terpning and McCarthy eventually quit illustrating and entered the fine art field during the 1970s. Bob Peak, with around 125 movies to his credit, began his poster career in 1953 after leaving Art Center School, Los Angeles. He continues to paint poster images while at the same time doing illustration work and gallery art. The high prices Peak readily commands for his beautiful work can be appreciated in movie posters for WEST SIDE STORY, ROLLERBALL, APOCALYPSE NOW and EXCALIBUR. He, too, has portrayed heroes like James Bond in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and Clint Eastwood in EVERY WHICH WAY YOU CAN. His poster for CAMELOT was the first movie poster to become a gold medal winner at the Society of Illustrators in New York. If you add it up, Brown, Terpning, McCarthy and Peak have illustrated around 600 movies and collectively served over 80 years in the industry, luring virtually millions of theatergoers into hundreds of cinemas across the nation.

There are, of course, others who have made significant contributions to the movie poster trade, many of them now living and working in the American West and better known to art collectors for their representational fine-art paintings. Robert McGinnis (who has done some 1,600 paperback covers and around 75 movie posters) did GATOR (starring Burt Reynolds), COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, and the highly regarded James Bond images for THUNDERBALL and MOONRAKER. Robert Totten did the James Cagney portrait for MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, and Donald Putman, the Charlton Heston portrait in THE MOUNTAIN MEN. What all these painters share is a highly personal style that is readily recognizable in their work.

How much artistic personality actually went into the film images? Despite contractual obligations which might establish the size of the star's head and its placement, as well as selling elements such as passion, sex and adventure, movie-poster artists were encouraged to bring their own style and interpretation to the film. Frank McCarthy, for instance, became well-known for his montage posters, including vignettes from movie highlights as in WHERE EAGLES DARE (with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton). McCarthy admits, however, that his style was likewise influenced by his movie work. "I had to make a painting work in a two-column ad and as a 24-sheet poster. My rendering had to be tight and that affected my paperback book illustrations as well as my paintings later on." [2] Even with specialty areas such as action or romance, the movie poster illustrator was also expected to be able to handle a wide range of subjects. Brown, for example, easily switched from the fairy tale of Buddy Hackett being roasted by a dragon in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM to a sprawling, sexy Elizabeth Taylor in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF or to the complex action seen in SIGN OF THE PAGAN.

Nevertheless, there were subjects that illustrators refused to do. "I won't do heavy-duty sex or skin," says Peak, adding that his price " weeds out a lot of stuff" and that at his age he no longer relates to "a lot of movies being done for young audiences. I'm content to do my own thing, which is to say that when something comes along that I like, I do it."

The freedom to do exactly what an artist wants is what pushed Howard Terpning out of illustration into the easel art field. Still, his movie illustration offered "invaluable training. I thrived on the competition and pressure — and enjoyed coming up with an appropriate and interesting way of presenting the film successfully. It teaches you to contend with and to adapt to problems and diversified situations. Illustrating also teaches, discipline — juggling all the different accounts, campaigns and schedules, and dealing with so many different people." Dealing with different people was the case for most poster illustrators. Seldom would the star be available to model so the illustrator worked from stills, sometimes using stand-in models. Brown occasionally resorted to using his family members as models. His wife, Mary Louise, supplied the body for Maureen O'Hara in AGAINST ALL FLAGS, his oldest daughter became the model for a woman menaced by a nightmare in NIGHTWALKER, and son Reynold posed for the boy star in the film FLIPPER! Peak and McCarthy tell that they were sent to the movie sets to gather material for their posters. McCarthy, for example, went to Paris to work on THE TRAIN and then to London for the James Bond movies.

As often as not, however, the posters were designed from reading the script or viewing parts of the movie while it was in production. For Brown, while working with American International Pictures, the posters were sometimes designed first, in order to spur the ad people into a promotional campaign. In fact, Brown was often called in to troubleshoot when a movie campaign appeared to be floundering. The wild scenes he concocted for monster and science-fiction films such as THE TIME MACHINE, THIS ISLAND EARTH, and GODZILLA VS. THE THING were inspiring.

Do the posters reflect the artist? The film? The times in which they were created? According to Rebello, "Posters speak volumes about the times in which they were created. They say a good deal about the audience for whom they are created and it's no accident that they've become cultural icons, surviving long beyond their function as movie advertisements."

"The posters are dynamic, compelling, larger than life," he continues. "Movie stars tend to be gorgeous specimens and the movie poster illustrators glorify that aspect, amking them more dramatic, more alluring, more sexual than they really are. The models project what we want to be: cool, on top of the situation, terrific looking and tremendously powerful."

Rebello stressed, however, that the movie posters do not shape the attitudes of the time as much as they reflect it. Take politics: "Monsters in the posters were the size of A-bombs in the 1940s and 1950s because we were dealing with the 'Red Menace' and there was a tremendous amount of fear and terror at the time."

Technology and industry competition have also impacted poster imagery. "The 1950s were very difficult times for the movies because of television," says Rebello. "Movie posters of the time tended to emphasize scale, grandeur and excitement — qualities that TV couldn't provide. That's why there was a great emphasis on the size of things, from women's breasts to guns, and on spectacle, like Cinemascope, 3-D and other gimmicks that couldn't be enjoyed in the living room. Movie posters were designed to get people off the couch and into the theaters... still a lot of theaters went under at the time."

Beginning in the 1960s, many filmmakers opted for photography over illustration to promote their movies. Today, however, major producers such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are pushing again for illustration, and movie posters are experiencing a renaissance in popularity. Contributing to the renaissance are video rental stores whose owners indicate that a good illustration on the box will catch a potential viewer's eye more quickly than a title — a phenomenon appreciated in the paperback book industry for decades.

With the renaissance in poster illustration has come a greater appreciation of posters as collectibles. A number of annual poster conventions are held across the country and stores dedicated to posters are popping up in major metropolitan areas. According to Bruce Carteron of Denver Graphics, CO, the highest-priced posters are those printed before 1950, but among post-'50s posters, science fiction, horror and monster movies are the highest priced. Even more recent work is increasing in value, particularly the "one-sheet" posters. Terpning's GONE WITH THE WIND poster sells for $200 while Brown's poster image for THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON goes for $400. Still, many of the posters can be had for well under $100. Carteron shows that McCarthy's poster for THUNDERBALL currently retails for $40, Peak's WEST SIDE STORY $40, Brown's CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF $80, and Terpning's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA $50. Poster prices vary considerably across the country.

What happened to the original paintings themselves? Terpning was working for an agency and most of his editorial illustration came back... "except the movie paintings, which were kept by the people who commissioned them," Terpning laments. "I wish the hell I had some of them. McCarthy faced pretty much the same circumstances as Terpning. Brown, on the hand, attempted to keep his paintings from the start, but it was a constant battle. After reproduction at the various studios the original artwork was placed in bins for Brown to pick up — somehow the paintings disappeared before he could get them. Many of them ended up in the hands of producers or were given away — thus the painting for THE ALAMO went to the Alamo Museum in San Antonio, TX.

Recent laws have afforded artists greater copyright protection by clearly defining to whom the original and the reproduction belong. Bob Peak says that during his first years in the field, his originals were kept by whoever commissioned the painting. More recently, however, he has sold the reproduction rights separately from the paintings. Original material occasionally comes on the market. In a May 1987 sale at Christie's in New York fourteen movie-poster paintings by Richard Amsel were sold, ranging in price from $6600 for an unused mixed-media piece created for the film LITTLE MISS MARKER to $15400 for the poster image used for DEATH ON THE NILE.

Judy Goffman of Judy Goffman Gallery, New York, NY, specializes in the work of illustrators. She points out that the prices of the paintings reflect both the name of the artist as well as the popularity and the subject matter of the film. Norman Rockwell's painting for STAGECOACH, for example, sold for $120,000.

Will film imagery increase in popularity? Certainly the recent auctions of Disney movie cels and those from the film WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT would suggest that this tangible art from an intangible art form continues to take on value. Says Rebello, "The increasing number of auctions and museum exhibitions dedicated to posters and their cultural, artistic and social content speaks to the value of the imagery beyond the need of selling a ticket. The art of movie imagery really tells us a tremendous amount about who we were, what our motivations were and, perhaps, how we got to where we are."

Notes:

1. Stephen Rebello has written extensively on the movie-poster phenomenon. Reel Art: Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen (New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1988) quickly sold out and a second printing is planned. "Selling Nightmares: Movie Poster Artists of the Fifties," by Rebello appeared in Cinefantastique (March 1987, pp. 41-101). An in-depth article on science-fiction and horror posters, this article focuses on Reynold Brown but also includes work by Al Kallis and Joseph Smith.

2. A one-sheet poster (27 by 41 inches) is a standard size designed to fit in a theater marquee. A 24-sheet is 24 of the standard-sized sheets, used to make billboard-sized displays.

(This article originally appeared in "Southwest Art", November 1989).

More articles:

October 1976 - "Frank C. McCarthy" (by James K. Howard)
July 1981 - "Frank C. McCarthy" (by Piet Schreuders)
June 10, 1982 - "Cowboy Art" (by Stewart McBride)
July 1989 - "Selling Bond" (by Stephen Rebello)
November 1989 - "Illustrators - Part 1: Movie Posters" (by Franz L. Brown)