 |
 |
 |
If you’ve gone to the movies in the last half-century, there’s a good chance you went at least once because of Drew Struzan. He wasn’t an actor, a writer, a director, or a part of any film crew. Struzan, an Oregon-born artist and illustrator who passed away earlier this week, gained fame in Hollywood and around the world for his magnificent airburshed movie poster creations. If you were drawn to see Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Marty McFly, or Harry Potter by a theatre’s one-sheet posters, you know Drew’s handiwork.
Born in Oregon City in 1947, Struzan journeyed south to Los Angeles in the 1960s and studied at the ArtCenter College of Design. After finishing school he set out on a commercial art career. In the early ’70s he started illustrating record album covers, crafting images for everyone from Tony Orlando and Dawn and The Beach Boys to Earth, Wind & Fire and Alice Cooper.
Drew’s work on movie art began in 1975 with posters for such B-titles as Empire of the Ants, Squirm, Tentacles, and Matilda (not the Roald Dahl kids’ film, but the 1978 boxing kangaroo comedy). Universal tapped him to create posters for Car Wash and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. His big break came in 1978, when fellow poster designer Charles White III asked him to collaborate on a design for the re-release of Star Wars. Their effort, better known as “the circus poster,” blends the sci-fi classic’s chracters with the look of a vintage advertisement hung on a picket fence. It’s also one of the series’ more sought-after posters by fans.
Over the next 25 years Struzan would bring some the most popular films and characters to vibrant life with his airburshing techniques. Among the ’80s titles benefiting from his artistry were The Muppet Movie; Blade Runner; E.T. the Extraterrestrial; The Thing; The Goonies; Back to the Future; An American Tail; Adventures in Babysitting; and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Of course, there was also The Legend of the Lone Ranger, The Sting II, and Stroker Ace, but collectors know it’s better to have a good one-sheet from a bad movie than the other way around.
By the mid-1990s computer-manipulated art began to supplant the traditional painted style of movie advertising, but Drew continued to create posters for Hook, Hocus Pocus, The Green Mile, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He also worked on illustrations for home video and videogame packaging. Apart from his poster work, Struzan’s art could be found on collectible plates and on U.S. postage stamps, including the John Wayne and James Stewart commemoratives. While he announced his retirement in 2008, Struzan would occasionally pick up his paints again for special projects, including posters for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. 2013 saw the release of the documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster.
Earlier this year Struzan’s family revealed that Drew was living with Alzheimer’s and was no longer able to work. He passed away on October 13 at the age of 78. Steven Spielberg paid tribute to Struzan, saying “Drew made event art. His posters made many of our movies into destinations…and the memory of those movies and the age we were when we saw them always comes flashing back just by glancing at his iconic photorealistic imagery. In his own invented style, nobody drew like Drew.”
Were you a fan of Drew Struzan’s film posters? If so, tell us which of his artistic creations is your favorite in the comments below.