Star Wars Quad Poster
Sold
Type: Poster
Condition: Excellent
Year: 1977
Genre: Scifi
Reference: #256
Hover over the image to zoom
More about this item:
Perhaps Chantrell's most famous Poster. For the full story about this Poster, please see Sim Branaghan's book "British Film Posters" (2006). In a nutshell, the Hildebrandt team produced the initial Poster design & this went to print before Producer Gary Kurtz gave the commission to Tom Chantrell (the key characters in the Hildebrandt design were deemed too anonymous & Kurtz wanted them to feature more strongly). Chantrell's Poster, of course supplied the goods & it is this design that is now instantly recognised as the image that launched the Star Wars Global franchise. There are two versions of Chantrell's "Star Wars" Poster. This one is the rarest. A couple of weeks after the launch of the Film in the UK, Star Wars was nominated for the Oscars & text to this effect was hastily added (lower right). However, due to the way in which blockbusters such as this were "rolled out" across the UK, only the larger metroplitan Cinemas were showing "Star Wars" before the switchover & thus the "non-Oscar" version of the Poster (as shown here) is the rarer of the two types to be found. This Poster also provides an interesting insight into the way Chantrell created his designs. Clearly influenced by the composition of "The Dirty Dozen", Tom replaced the firing guns with light sabres but in order to achieve the right body shapes, he photographed his wife Shirley, posing as Princess Leia. Shirley & the Chantrell's twin daughters, Louise & Jaqui, were frequently pressed into service to be photographed as models for various Posters that Tom worked on. This particular Poster has two light diagonal creases to the upper corners but otherwise is in excellent condition. NB. Christies recently sold a similar unbacked non-Oscars Quad such as this for £5,000 (Lot #247 1st Nov 2012).