William Bendix — Deja Vu!

Here are two great William Bendix posters … sort of! 

The Blue Dahlia, Paramount Pictures, 1946

Cover-Up, Strand Pictures released thru United Artists, 1949

Oh Barbara! Poster of the Day!

Barbara, Warners, and the Big Q…what’s not to love? 

Three Posters for the Holidays

Poster of the Day: 3 Stunners from the 30s

The Greatest Movie Poster of All Time?

The poster of the day is for the 1933 film The Sin of Nora Moran, a low budget programmer (aka Voice from the Grave) starring Zita Johann of The Mummy fame. Although Orson Welles was said to have been influenced by this when developing Citizen Kane, this remains that oddest of films in that it is more well known for its poster than it is on its own merits. When Premiere listed their 25 best movie posters in history, this finished second, while IndependentCritics.com said this was the greatest poster of all time. What do you think?

I’m not so sure — certainly it’s dripping with pathos, has a nice simplicity, as well as a sensational amount of sex appeal (even for pre-code 1933) — but as provocative as the image is, the pose is lifted from ancient Greeks, and the design is too top-heavy (ouch, sorry) for me. My five-minute Photoshop tune-up is included below. In this case I like mine a little better. I tweaked the scaling, alignment, and spacing of the disparate elements, and moved the title to the bottom of the design. I also reduced the size of The and Of in the title so that it would center a little more easily. Nora’s figure and the shape of the title type are both rather triangular, and I like her resting on the title much more than when it hangs over her head — although one could argue that conceptually the weight of her “sin” should be bearing down on her! These are more hi-res than usual, in case you’d like to download. 

Greta Garbo: Personality Posters

…and a nice pair of half-sheets…

Poster of the Day: The Great Gatsby (1949)

I’m “off home” tomorrow to see the very rare 1949 version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby which is screening at the AFI Silver Theater as part of the Noir City D.C. film festival. I’m looking forward to meeting some old friends for the first time as well!

If you'd like to learn a little more about the tragic life of Alan Ladd, check out my bio piece here, which was first published in Noir City, the official magazine of The Film Noir Foundation.

Poster of the Day: The Letter (1929)

Here’s some stunning artwork featuring Jeanne Eagels promoting the 1929 version of The Letter. Bette Davis went on to make the role of Leslie Crosbie her own in the 1940 iteration of the film, but Eagels was a powerhouse in her own right and like Bette Davis, an Academy Award nominee in the Leading Actress category.

Start of a regular feature here, enjoy!