Reynold Brown

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Reynold Brown
Born William Reynold Brown
(1917-10-18)October 18, 1917[1]
Los Angeles, California
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Chadron, Nebraska[2]

Reynold Brown (October 18, 1917 – August 24, 1991) was a prolific American realist artist who painted many Hollywood film posters.

He attended Alhambra High School and refined his drawing under his teacher Lester Bonar.[3] A talented artist, Brown met cartoonist Hal Forrest around 1936-37. Forrest hired Brown to ink (uncredited) Forrest's comic strip Tailspin Tommy.[4] 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.[4] Brown subsequently won a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute.

During World War II he worked as a technical artist at North American Aviation. There 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 drew paperback book covers.[5]

Brown taught at the Art Center College of Design where he met Misha Kallis, then an art director at Universal Pictures.[6] Through Kallis, Brown began his film poster work starting with The World in His Arms (1952), then did the art work for dozens of film posters, including:[7]

Poster art. A giant woman clad in a white bikini straddles an elevated, 4-lane highway. She has an angry expression, and she's holding one smoking car in her left hand as if it were a toy. She is reaching down to grab another. There are several car crashes on the highway, and people are fleeing from her as if they were small insects.
Brown's poster for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958); part of this image was selected as the cover art for a recent book about Brown's art and life.[8]

Brown's original painting for the poster of The Alamo hung for many years at the actual Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.[citation needed]

He suffered a severe stroke in 1976 that left his left side paralyzed and ended his commercial work.[9] Brown and his family moved to Dawes County, Nebraska; with his wife's help, Brown continued to paint landscapes until his death in 1991.

In 1994, Mel Bucklin's documentary about Reynold Brown entitled The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters was broadcast on US public television.[10] A book reproducing many of Brown's artworks, Reynold Brown: A Life in Pictures, was published in 2009.[8]

References

  1. Birth and death dates were obtained from the Social Security Death Index.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. For biographical information about Bonar, see Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Extensive discussion of the comic strip.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Short biography and 19 medium-resolution images of Brown's poster art.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Page from an extensive website dedicated to Brown and his legacy.
  7. Brown's artwork on film posters was unsigned. Brown's own records of the film posters on which he worked have been posted by his son, Franz Brown. See Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. 8.0 8.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Further reading

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. An appreciation of Brown's work on the occasion of the publication of Reynold Brown: A Life In Pictures (2009); Horberg is a film producer.
  • Illustration magazine #7 July 2003