ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT 1957 Dirk Bogarde Michael Powell Eric Pulford LIFT BILL

Original British 16 1/2 inch x 22 inch Lift Bill Poster for the 1957 Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger War Film ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, based on the book by W. Stanley Moss and starring Dirk Bogarde, Marius Goring, David Oxley, Cyril Cusack and Laurence Payne.

Led by British officers, partisans on Crete plan to kidnap the island's German commander and smuggle him to Cairo, Egypt to embarrass the occupiers.

Poster art by Eric Pulford (1915 - 2005). Having taken life classes at Leeds College of Art for 5 years Pulford was apprenticed as a commercial artist in 1931 to Gilchrist Bros a process house of 24 staff. Leslie Whitchurch, a partner in a Leicester based agency and also a part-time publicity manager for Rank, became aware of Pulford’s work and asked him to do some freelance work for him. Then in 1943 Rank invited Pulford to start a publicity department for them in London resulting in posters for “Henry V”, “Odd Man Out” and “Oliver Twist”. When the head of Downtons advertising agency, Charles Collins, died, Pulford was asked to take over. He became chairman and managing director but still spent most of his time designing posters. He retired in 1986. Pulford is responsible, either through his own artwork or design, for several hundred posters, some for classic films such as the ones already mentioned plus “Edge of the World”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “Genevieve”, “Reach for the Sky” and “A Night to Remember”. He is, without doubt, the most important force in British film poster design from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s.

The poster is in fine folded condition.