William Rose (illustrator)
He also illustrated all the promotional artwork for producer Val Lewton's series of low-budget B movies at RKO, most notably the horror film Cat People (1942).Rose is considered one of the rare poster artists of the period whose individual style has achieved recognition, alongside others like Al Hirschfeld, Alberto Vargas, and Reynold Brown.His poster for Out of the Past (1947) typified the noir style, portraying Jane Greer's character as a "invitingly hallucinatory babe" and Robert Mitchum's as a "lovesick, surly chump" with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.[15] Film historian Eddie Muller called it a "classic poster" that captured the character dynamic of attraction matched with distrust, noting that Greer's "dangling gun is a masterstroke: Is she about to toss it away—or open fire?[16] In the Historical Dictionary of Film Noir, Andrew Spicer praised the Born to Kill poster for its depiction of Lawrence Tierney as a "tough guy" with "stony features" and a "ubiquitous hanging cigarette" in his mouth beside Claire Trevor as "the femme fatale ... in the customary long, sheathlike dress".[17] In the horror genre, Rose is credited with the posters for RKO's string of B movies produced by Val Lewton, including Cat People (1942) and The Body Snatcher (1945).Critical appraisals of his posters for Citizen Kane and Cat People have described stylistic clashes between Rose's illustrations and the actual tone, genre, and themes of the advertised films.[22] English writer Matthew Sweet said that the Cat People illustration acquired its "arresting power" through "its rejection of the picture it advertises".[24] Instead of offering a painting in "moody chiaroscuro", which Sweet asserted would have more accurately conveyed the "poetic horror film['s]" atmosphere of subtle dread, Rose's decidedly unsubtle illustration boasted "a snarling Panther of the Baskervilles and a red-hot dame in a strapless dress".[27] In November 2011, Rose's watercolor painting for the cover of the 1961 paperback Woman Missing and Other Stories by Helen Nielsen, bundled with a copy of the book itself, sold at auction for $1,015.75 (approx.A signed illustration titled "Strike Up the Band" (1951)—a tempera painting depicting Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in the 1940 film of the same name—was valued at $500 c. 1991 (around $1,118 in 2023).