The Supplement: Reynold Brown

Introducing a bit of a hero of mine - Reynold Brown, creator of some of the most memorably lurid film posters of all time. Brown's images are burned into my consciousness. As a teenager, my bedroom wall was covered in his stuff (alongside my door-sized poster of Sigourney Weaver as Lt Ellen Ripley...), and he is solely responsible for my undying affection for b-movie monsters. The movies themselves were always disappointing. How could their content possibly live up to the promise of their poster art? I know some of you are irritated by long posts profiling lots and lots of images, but, in truth, I could have added even more because I love them all and didn't want to choose! Can I suggest, as you scroll through the posters, you ensure you're listening to Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day The Earth Stood Still...

"WILLIAM REYNOLD BROWN (1917 - 1991) was a prolific American realist artist. He attended Alhambra High School and refined his drawing under his teacher Lester Bonar. A talented artist, Brown met Hal Foster that led him to ghost draw the comic strip Tailspin Tommy from 1936-1937. Norman Rockwell's sister was a teacher at Alhambra High, and Brown later met Rockwell who advised him to leave cartooning if he wanted to be an illustrator. The talented Brown soon won a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute. During World War II he worked as an artist at North American Aviation where he met his wife, fellow artist Mary Louise Tejeda. Following the war Brown drew numerous advertisements and illustrations for magazines such as Argosy, Popular Science, Saturday Evening Post, Boy's Life, Outdoor Life, and Popular Aviation. Brown also painted some of the earliest paperback book covers. Brown taught at the Art Center College of Design where he met Misha Kallis, then an art director at Universal Pictures. Through Kallis, Brown began his film poster work starting with The World in His Arms in 1954. He went on to produce over 300 more movie posters, including such titles as: Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula, This Island Earth, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Man of a Thousand Faces, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Spartacus, and many more. Brown's original painting for the poster of The Alamo hung for many years at the actual Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.

He suffered a severe stroke in 1976 that left his left side paralyzed and ended his commercial work. But with the help of his wife Brown continued to paint landscapes until his death in 1991."

from illustration-magazine.com