GO FORTHE GOLD

The iconic movie posters of Bill Gold

By Val Quarles

I made my first poster in 3rd or 4th grade. It was for a school clean up drive. It was a “wanted” poster with a “trash monster”

that looked suspiciously like my dad. That was the beginning of a life long pattern of creating and being an admirer of graphic art, posters, and spe-cifically movie posters.

A movie poster is graphic art at it’s best, and to my mind, most fun. You aren’t having to help sell insur-ance, or dentistry, or a car wash. You get to be as creative and intriguing as the movie. You are still “selling” but you have a product that is more inher-ently interesting. No one understood this better than graphic designer Bill Gold.

Bill Gold was born January 3, 1921 in New York City. He studied illustration at the prestigious Pratt Insti-tute in New York, and he had the good fortune to begin his professional career in the advertising de-partment of Warner Bros., in 1941. A mere six years later he was head of poster design.

Although Bill Gold never “copped” to any influences, in an interview with Lars Trodson, he stated in his younger years he would copy the illustrations of the Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines. That work would have been Rockwell’s, J.C. Leyendecker, Rene Robert Bouche, and others. It was the 20’s and 30’s and illustra-tions rather than photographs were what were on and in magazines.

In 1967 he won first prize from the Illustra-tors Club for the poster for ‘Camelot’. In it you can see the influence of illustrators like Maxfield Parrish and Leyendecker, in the Nouveau swirls, the precise, almost geometric lines in the side illustrations, and color scheme. But future Gold is there - in the silohuette of the pale woman’s profile offset by that of the swarthy man’s, the breaking into and use of negative space.

Bill Gold didn’t just make movie posters. He made the movie posters for many of the film industry’s most famous, most cultish, most well-known films. Read through his list of work, and not only will you remember scenes from the movies, but after many of the titles you will see the image of the poster in your mind’s eye: The Big Sleep; Strangers on a Train; Streetcar Named De-sire; Dial M for Murder; East of Eden; Mister Roberts; Giant; The Searchers; A Face in a Crowd; The Pajama Game; Splendor in the Grass; Gypsy; The Music Man; My Fair Lady; The Great Race; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Bonnie and Clyde; Wait Until Dark; Bullitt; Funny Girl; There’s a Girl in My Soup; Woodstock; Diamonds are Forever; Fiddler on the Roof; The Exorcist; High Plains Drift-er; Papillon; The Sting; Dog Day Afternoon; Heaven’s Gate; On Golden Pond; Unfor-given...the list goes on and on.

What strikes me about his work isn’t just the volume, it’s the volume of iconic work coupled with his range of imagery. He’s not a “one trick pony”. That isn’t to say he doesn’t have some “tells”, he does. He often uses negative space, and silhou-ettes. Both of which I plan to use in my own work. He used these techniques in mid-ca-reer - Dirty Harry, Bullitt, Cool Hand Luke, and all through his later work, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Mystic River, and of course the iconic, very creepy and unfor-gettable poster for The Exorcist. But he also likes visual analogies. The canoe coming out of the eye in the poster for Deliverance - playing on many themes in the movie, the group of friends being watched and hunted by the antagonists, Jon Voight’s character seeing what they were doing to his friends, the fear, and aggression of the image itself, nothing is quite as terrifying as a sharp object in your eye. Sometimes he chooses a minimalist look with lots of neg-ative space, as in the poster for The Way We Were, which is just a black and white photo, with most of the image bleached out and Redford and Streisand walking together along a beach, shown in high contrast, walking into the red title beneath their feet. With family films or comedies, he is very vaudevillian and traditional in his approach, grouping illustrations in a kind

of “mash up” of characters in various emo-tive states, with a few illustrated scenes from situations in the film. Look at the post-ers for The Great Race, What’s Up Doc, and The Music Man. All of those films are comedies, and the posters are simple and happy, with no need of provactive imag-ery. He takes risks only when creating for those having adult themes.

His work has become what every graphic designer secretly and not so secretly, pines for. His commercial art, has become “just” art.

Bill Gold is still alive and is now 95 years old. I am overwhelmed with admiration for his talent, and deeply envious of what I know must have been a fun, interesting and fulfilling professional life. I can only hope to have one half as satisfying.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)Casablanca (1942)Night and Day (1946)The Big Sleep (1946)Escape Me Never (1947)Winter Meeting (1948)

Strangers on a Train (1951)A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)Dial M for Murder (1954)The Silver Chalice (1954)

East of Eden (1955)Mister Roberts (1955)Baby Doll (1955)

Giant (1956)Lone Ranger (1956)

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The Wrong Man (1956)A Face in the Crowd (1957)The James Dean Story (1957)

The Pajama Game (1957)The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)Top Secret A�air (1957)The Old Man and the Sea (1958)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)Gypsy (1962)

The Music Man (1962)My Fair Lady (1964)Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)Sex and the Single Girl (1964)The Great Race (1965)Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Camelot (1967)

The Fox (1967)Wait Until Dark (1967)Bullitt (1968)Funny Girl (1968)A Dream of Kings (1969)

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)No Blade of Grass (1970)Ryan's Daughter (1970)Soldier Blue (1970)Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)The Go-Between (1970)There Was a Crooked Man (1970)There's a Girl in My Soup (1970)Dorian Gray (1970)A Clockwork Orange (1971)Woodstock (1970)Diamonds are Forever (1971)Fiddler on the Roof (1970)Get Carter (1970)Klute (1971)McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)Medicine Ball Caravan (1971)Deliverance (1972)Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)Lady Sings the Blues (1972)The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972)What's Up, Doc? (1972)Day for Night (1973)The Exorcist (1973)High Plains Drifter (1973)O Lucky Man (1973)Oklahoma Crude (1973)Papillon (1973)Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)Scarecrow (1973)Steel Yard Blues (1973)The Sting (1973)The Way We Were (1973)The Front Page (1974)Law and Disorder (1974)Mame (1974)99 and 44/100% Dead (1974)The Odessa File (1974)

The Sugarland Express (1974)The Yakuza (1974)

Zandy's Bride (1974)Barry Lyndon (1975)

Dog D

ay Afternoon (1975)

The Drow

ning Pool (1975)Funny Lady (1975)H

ard Times (1975)A

ny Which W

ay You Can (1980)Bronco Billy (1980)

The Dogs of W

ar (1980)Fam

e (1980)H

eaven's Gate (1980)

The Jazz Singer (1980)

The Last Married Couple in A

merica (1980)

Little Miss M

arker (1980)The Long Riders (1980)

The Nude Bom

b (1980)Som

ewhere in Tim

e (1980)The Stunt M

an (1980)Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980)

Clash of the Titans (1981)Endless Love (1981)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The Four Seasons (1981)Hard Country (1981)

On Golden Pond (1981)The Funhouse (1981)

Deathtrap (1982)Evil Under the Sun (1982)

Firefox (1982)Honkytonk Man (1982)

I, The Jury (1982)My Favorite Year (1982)

Breathless (1983)Cross Creek (1983)

Eddie Macon's Run (1983)

Mahogany (1975)Old Curiosity Shop (1975)The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)Ra�erty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975)Return of the Pink Panther (1975)Rooster Cogburn (1975)Rosebud (1975)The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)The Hindenburg (1975)The Wilby Conspiracy (1975)A Matter of Time (1976)A Star is Born (1976)

All the President's Men (1976)The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976)The Enforcer (1976)Fellini's Casanova (1976)Gable and Lombard (1976)

Marathon Man (1976)The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)Portnoy's Complaint (1976)The Ritz (1976)W.C. Fields and Me (1976)A Piece of the Action (1977)Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)

Greased Lightning (1977)Julia (1977)Smokey and the Bandit (1977)The Gauntlet (1977)The Sentinel (1977)Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)Bloodbrothers (1978)California Suite (1978)Convoy (1978)The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)Movie Movie (1978)Same Time, Next Year (1978)

The Wiz (1978)Agatha (1979)Alien (1979)Chapter Two (1979)Escape from Alcatraz (1979)The Great Santini (1979)Hair (1979)Scavenger Hunt (1979)The Bell Jar (1979)The Promise (1979)

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Heartbreak Ridge (1986)Platoon (1986)Hamburger Hill (1987)Orphans (1987)The Believers (1987)The Untouchables (1987)Bird (1988)Colors (1988)The Dead Pool (1988)

Mississippi Burning (1988)Moonwalker (1988)The Accused (1988)Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)Great Balls of Fire! (1989)Night Visitor (1989)Pink Cadillac (1989)

In the Line of Fire (1993)A Perfect World (1993)

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995)

The Old Curiosity Shop (1995)Absolute Power (1997)

True Crime (1999)

Mystic River (2003)Cool Hand Luke (1967)

A REAL COOL HAND

BILL GOLDgraphic designer