By Ben Marks — Earlier this year, when we reported on DJ Ginsberg’s and Marilyn Wagner’s mammoth collection of movie-ad print blocks and printing plates, scores of these stellar pieces of cinema history from the early 1930s to early 1980s caught our eye. There were ads for Bogart and Bergman in “Casablanca,” Elvis Presley in “King Creole,” Sean Connery in “Dr. No,” and Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz.” If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had a category for Best Print-Advertising Archive,...

Unboxing Modernism: How the Russian Revolution Spurred Mid-Century Design

By Ben Marks — Who was “The Man With the Golden Arm” and where did he come from? Well, Frank Sinatra played the “Man” in the 1955 Otto Preminger film, and the movie itself was shot at RKO Studios in Hollywood. But after reading John Clifford’s "Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern Graphic Design" (Peachpit Press, 2013), I've come to think that “Saul Bass” and “Russia right after the 1917 revolution” might also be suitable answers to these questions about one of the most famous movie posters of the...

Welcome to the Retro-Futuristic World of Laurent Durieux

By Ben Marks — Laurent Durieux doesn't actually live in a retro-futuristic world imagined by H.G. Wells and designed by Raymond Loewy, but looking at his screenprints of the past few years, you'd be forgiven for thinking he does. In Durieux's world (see slideshow below), gigantic robots tower over forests populated by mythical beasts such as Bigfoot and King Kong; city skies are thick with airships shaped like Snoopy, while Buck Rodgers-like vehicles whiz by on slender monorails; and movie monsters are...

Real Hollywood Thriller: Who Stole Jaws?

By Ben Marks — The first pages of Peter Benchley's 1974 novel, “Jaws,” as well as the opening minutes of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster, begin with the attack of a young, late-night skinny dipper named Chrissie Watkins, who’s dragged to her watery doom by a great white shark, feeding in the waters off the seaside vacation town of Amity. The book and film struck a chord, in no small part because they capitalized on our fear of the unknown—in this case, of being chomped to death by untold rows of unseen...

Mondo: The Monster of Modern Movie Posters

By Ben Marks — Most serious movie-poster collectors search for that perfect copy of “The Bride of Frankenstein” from 1934, “Casablanca” from 1942, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” from 1951, or Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” from 1958. But for the last half-dozen or so years, a new type of collector has appeared, one whose sights are set on contemporary, limited-edition, signed-and-numbered, screenprinted posters designed not by the marketing departments of Hollywood studios but by some of the biggest names...

Steve McQueen, Mike Wolfe, and the Husky 400

By Ben Marks — When some people think "motorcycles," the first name that comes to many minds is Mike Wolfe, the co-host of "American Pickers" who's made no secret of his love of just about anything on two wheels. But even Mike would probably agree that the name that's even more closely associated with motorcycles is Steve McQueen. On May 14, 2011, Bonhams will offer one of McQueen's bikes in an auction of motorcycles and motorcycle memorabilia in Carmel, California. The marquee McQueen bike that's...

Hunting Down the Most Collectible Movie Posters, from 1930s Horror to 1960s Sci-Fi

By Maribeth Keane and Anne Galloway — I worked at 20th Century Fox in the publicity department, so I was always fascinated with film, and then I moved to Montreal in late ’68, right after I got married. I was in the film business, and I spent all my free time going to antiques shops and buying all kinds of strange collectibles. Across from where I worked, there was a used bookstore going out of business, and everything was half-priced. When I walked in, I picked up an old magazine lying on the counter and said, “How much?” The...

The Art of the Movie Poster

By Maribeth Keane — Our first book was called "The Independent Movie Poster Book" and that was published by Harry Abrams. The focus was all independent movies post-1980. We picked that as a cutoff because that was the beginning of the modern indie movie movement with Sex, Lies, and Videotape being one of the real keys to that. There are a lot of good designs in indie movies. There tend to be more interesting designs because there’s not as much money and they generally don’t have the star power of the major...

David Lance Goines Discusses Perfect Poster Design

By Maribeth Keane — I don’t collect posters. I don’t collect anything. I started making posters one at a time by hand in high school just for specific events, basically got going when I was a freshman. I still make them today, but they’re printed on a printing press now. I’ve made 221 posters, not including the ones I did in high school. Fundamentally, I believe that in order to be effective as opposed to artsy and not really effective at all, a poster has to be extremely simple. The Shepard Fairey posters...