Movie Posters, Part Five: The Artists

Artist: Jack Davis

Let's look at the most popular poster artists.

Reynold Brown was one of the kings of 1950s and 1960s American sci fi and horror posters.  He worked in realist oil, with bold color and dramatic lighting.  He did many sci-fi/horror one-sheets for Universal and AIP.  He did the posters for Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) and The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963).

Robert McGinnis was a hugely influential American illustrator.  He defined the look of a lot of 1960s to 1970s pop-cinema marketing.  McGinnis was the go-to painter for 1960s spy imagery, known for glamorous, elongated figures and lively montage layouts.  He was famous for his "McGinnis woman": tall, elegant, stylishly posed.  He provided the artwork for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Thunderball (1965), Barbarella (1968), The Odd Couple (1968), The Wrecking Crew (1968) and Sleeper (1973).  

Frank McCarthy was a specialist in action battle scenes.  His Great Escape art is a textbook example: lots of figures in motion, dramatic perspective, and a sense of chaos.  

He also did the poster art for Duel at Diablo (1966) and Venetian Affair (1967).

Howard Terpning was a prolific American illustrator who created over 80 movie posters, including the posters for Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Sound of Music (1965) and A Man for All Seasons (1966).  He was a likely influence on later poster king Drew Struzan.

Bob Peak illustrated the posters for West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969).

Jack Davis, a legendary MAD magazine cartoonist, illustrated the posters for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), The Flim-Flam Man (1967), One More Time (1970), Bananas (1971) and The Bad New Bears (1976).

Mort Drucker and Jack Rickard, who also became well-known for their MAD Magazine work, brought the same caricature and gag sensibility to movie posters.  Here are Drucker's posters for The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971) and American Graffiti (1973).  

Here is Rickard's posters for The Pink Panther (1964) and Masquerade (1965).

Bob Tanenbaum created posters for Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Superfly (1972), Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), Cujo (1983), A Christmas Story (1983) and The Color of Money (1986).

Frank Frazetta was the titan of fantasy art.  His Mrs. Pollifax - Spy (1971) poster is unusual for him but still has his dynamic figure work and dramatic lighting.

Here are posters that he illustrated for two other comedy films.

Sandy Kossin was a versatile illustrator who did both straight and humorous work.   His posters for Cold Turkey (1971) and Avanti! (1972) are among his greatest satirical pieces.

Steve Frankfurt was responsible for the concept and design of the poster for Goodbye, Columbus (1969).  The famous close-up of Ali MacGraw with the "Every father's daughter is a virgin" tagline is very much in his minimalist, high-impact style.

George Akimoto. a Japanese-American illustrator, created the poster for Dillinger (1973).

Barbara Baranowska, professionally known as Basha, is a trailblazing figure in the Polish School of Posters, a mid-20th-century movement renowned for its bold, minimalist graphic design that elevated film advertising to fine art.  After studying painting at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts (graduating in 1959), she gained prominence in the 1960s designing posters for Polish cinema, blending surrealism with everyday motifs.  Her style evolved to encompass Hollywood classics, such as an enigmatic design for Andrzej Zulawski's Possession (1981), capturing its psychological horror through stark, evocative imagery.  

Phil Roberts is a versatile American illustrator whose career spans surf culture, concept art, and Hollywood posters, often infusing his work with dynamic, humorous realism reminiscent of Mad Magazine's Jack Davis.  Emerging in the 1980s via Surfer magazine covers and painted surfboards, he transitioned to film with posters like Hot Dog. . . The Movie (1984), a ski comedy that launched his Tinseltown tenure.  He is known for genre-spanning designs - horror (Night of the Creeps, 1986; Chillerama, 2011), sci-fi (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2004), fantasy adventure (The Beastmaster) and cult fare (Grandma's Boy, 2006).  Roberts is known for extraordinarily sleek, hyper-realistic airbrushed art.  He often mixed glamour with pulp exaggeration and rock-poster energy.  

Roberts made this poster for Back to School (1986), but it was never used.  

John Alvin (1948-2008) stands as one of Hollywood's most revered poster artists, crafting over 200 key images that defined 1980s and 1990s cinema with his luminous, hand-painted gouache style - ethereal yet epic, blending fantasy with emotional depth. He became known for his iconic use of the "Alvin Light " - a glow or aura around subjects.  He specialized in emotional storytelling through carefully controlled color palettes.  His work blends painterly romanticism with modern composition. Starting at Disney in the 1970s (where he illustrated The Black Cauldron), Alvin's breakthrough came with Steven Spielberg collaborations: the moonlit silhouette and glowing fingertip of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), the rain-slicked dystopia of Blade Runner (1982), and the majestic Jurassic Park (1993) T-Rex reveal. His portfolio spans sci-fi (Star Wars: Episode I), animation (The Lion King, 1994), and horror (The Lost Boys, 1987), often prioritizing mood over literalism - think glowing eyes in The Gremlins (1984). His body of work is astonishing.  He created some of the most recognizable posters ever.  He also created notable movie posters for Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), The Color Purple (1985), The Goonies (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), Willow (1988) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).  Where Drew Struzan is known for montage compositions, Alvin is known for creating emotion, atmosphere, and iconography. His posters remain museum favorites  Alvin's originals fetch high at auctions, and his estate site preserves his legacy as the painter who made blockbusters unforgettable.

Bill Garland, a prolific Hollywood illustrator since the 1970s, excels in high-octane, airbrushed realism for action, sci-fi and comedy posters, creating main images for every major studio from his base in Portugal.  An award-winning commercial artist and ex-agency creative director, his breakthrough was a fiery, post-apocalyptic Mad Max poster.  Garland's portfolio boasts genre diversity: the golden Bat-symbol for Batman (1989), the absurd whimsy of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), and the gritty escape of Escape from New York (1981).  His meticulous work blends technical precision with blockbuster energy.

Neal Adams, a comic book titan famed for revitalizing Batman with dynamic anatomy and shadowy noir, moonlighted as a movie poster artist in the 1970s, bringing his inked intensity to genre films. Adams tackled sci-fi (Westworld, 1973, with Yul Brynner's menacing robot) and horror (Grizzly, 1976; Telefon, 1977), his posters pulsing with tension via bold poses and dramatic lighting.  He also illustrated martial arts imports like Da Chu Tou (1979) and Se Ying Diu Sau (1978), adapting his superhero flair to karate action. 

Boris Vallejo is a fantasy/erotica master whose hyper-realistic oil paintings - muscular barbarians, scantily clad heroines and mythical beasts - defined 1980s sword-and-sorcery posters, often co-credited with wife Julie Bell. He illustrated Tarzan and Conan paperback covers before turning to film posters: steamy designs for Barbarella (1968), Deathstalker (1983), She Wolves of the Wasteland (1988), and George A. Romero's Knightriders (1981), where armored jousters evoke Arthurian pulp.  Vallejo's touch graced comedies too, like an unused National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) in his signature style, and horror (Q: The Winged Serpent, 1982).  His glossy, pin-up aesthetic - archived on his site and CineMaterial - blurs fine art and exploitation, with limited prints still fueling fantasy fandom.

Mort Künstler (1927–2025), an American painter dubbed the "Painter of the Civil War" for his meticulous battlefield tableaux, briefly dominated 1970s disaster cinema posters with explosive, crowd-pleasing drama. A pulp magazine vet from the 1950s, he exploded onto film with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), his capsized-ship disaster - featuring Gene Hackman's desperate climb - capturing the era's Irwin Allen spectacle.  Künstler's output included tense thrillers (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, 1974; Breakheart Pass, 1975), action (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, 1974) and fantasy (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, 1973), his photorealistic oils packing posters with peril and heroism.  

Rick Meyerowitz, a New York illustrator, channeled 1970s counterculture humor into iconic comedy posters.  His breakthrough was the raucous National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) one-sheet - a frat-boy bacchanal of toga-clad chaos that Première magazine hailed as "one of the greatest movie posters ever." 

A prominent ad agency, Diener-Hause, created the posters for The Graduate (1967), Save the Tiger (1973), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Marathon Man (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).  The agency generally centered a poster design around a striking production still.