Here is a short biography of movie poster artist Reynold Brown.
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When he was in grammar school in the 1920s Reynold
Brown was picked out by his teachers as needing special
discipline to correct an obvious character deficiency. He
was left-handed. They forced him to write
"properly", using his right hand. Those
teachers were eventually pleased to tell his parents that
they had succeeded in getting him to write with his right
hand. Unfortunately, he continued to draw left-handed.
This they assured his parents, was not important, for
after all, artistic skills were of little consequence and
would be unimportant to him for surviving later in life. Reynold's
mother thought otherwise. She had saved his first drawing
of a train, done at the age of three. As he got older she
saved his grammar school notebooks which he had peppered
with drawings of soldiers and aircraft. By the time he
graduated from high school he had a personal collection
of drawings to which he had constantly. Forty years later
those "inconsequential artistic skills"
identified by his grammar school teachers would have made
Brown one of the most sought after artists in Hollywood.
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Reynold Brown was born in 1917 Los Angeles as William
Reynold Brown to William Reynold Brown (a railroad
engineer) and his wife Ada (Fairley) Brown. He drew
continuously as a child. He particularly liked telling
stories by drawing, comic book style, for the
neighborhood children while sitting on a sidewalk curb or
a porch stairway.
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He got a well rounded art education in Alhambra High
School in California under the stewardship of a World War
I veteran and artist, Lester Bonar. His skills won him a
scholarship to attend art school after graduation but due
to the death of his father he had to begin working to
care for his mother and two younger sisters. |
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About 1936 or '37, with the help of Bonar, he was able to
get a job inking and then drawing the syndicated comic
strip by Hal Forrest, "Tailspin Tommy." This
strip told the story of a barnstorming pilot, Tailspin
Tommy. Brown worked on the strip until 1942. During
high school Brown came to admire the great illustrators
of the age, such as J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, N.C.
Wyeth and especially Norman Rockwell. Rockwell's sister
taught at Brown's high school. Through Bonar, Brown was
able to meet Norman Rockwell. Rockwell advised Brown that
if he wanted to learn illustration he would have to leave
the comic strip and start finding jobs as an illustrator.
Brown left, to the dismay of Forrest.
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With the outbreak of World War II Brown was able to
use his aircraft rendering skills learned from working on
Tailspin Tommy to land a job with North American Aviation
in California. At first he did technical illustrations
for service manuals. He soon devised what were to be
called phantom drawings in which aircraft were drawn with
a clear skin so that the internal structure of the
aircraft was visible. On some of these he collaborated
with another artist, Mary Louise Tejeda, the only woman
artist in the department of over forty men. Brown also
listened to the stories of returning aviators and used
these stories as the basis of a number of illustrations
which appeared in the technical manuals, advertising,
North American promotional literature and its in house
publication, Skyline. The phantom drawings also appeared
in Popular Aviation and Flying Magazine. |
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In 1946, at war's end, Brown married Tejeda. They
moved to New York so he could pursue a career in
illustration. His illustrations appeared in magazines
such as Boys' Life, Outdoor Life, Popular Science and
Argosy. He also did some of the first paperback or
pocketbook illustrations. His work appeared on the covers
of books by Van Tilburg Clark, (The Ox Bow Incident),
William Faulkner (Sanctuary) and Erle (SP) Stanley
Gardner (Perry Mason mysteries). |
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By 1951 Brown had a growing family of three children.
He was also still caring for his mother and sisters. The
burdens of caring for two distant households was too much
so Brown, enticed by an offer from North American,
decided to move back to California. He realized he
preferred the freedom of free-lance illustration, and
with the encouragement of Tejeda, went back to it. Working
first in Temple City and later La Verne, he continued to
do illustration work. He also took a teaching position at
Art Center College of Design. There he would teach figure
and head drawing for 26 years. Among his many students
were some of today's finest artists including sculptors
Hollis Williford and Richard Mac Donald, painters Gordon
Snidow and John Asaro, and Illustrators Robert Peak and
Dru Struzan.
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In 1951, while doing a show for Art Center, Brown met
Misha Kallis, an Art Director for Universal Pictures.
Brown soon completed his first movie poster for
Universal, The World in His Arms, featuring Gregory Peck
and Ann Blyth. That began a series of over 250 campaigns
for Universal, MGM, Disney and American International
Pictures (AIP). Brown's work was used to promote classics
like Ben Hur and Spartacus, westerns wuch as The Alamo
and Taza, Son of Cochise and drama, horror, monster and
science fiction films. His science fiction works for such
pieces as The Time Machine and This Island Earth, as well
as his monsters like The Creature from the Black Lagoon
have already become popular among collectors. Brown's
work featured many important stars including Elizabeth Taylor (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), John Wayne and Richard
Widmark (The Alamo), Rod Steiger (Run of the Arrow, Al
Capone), James Cagney (Man of a Thousand Faces), James
Stewart (Shenandoah, The Rare Breed) and Fred MacMurray
(Gun for a Coward).
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While doing the movie posters Brown continued to do
other illustration work for other media including a
number of record jacket covers. |
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In the early seventies Brown decided to take part in
the developing market for fine art paintings on a western
theme. Brown had always liked painting the west as a
subject in his illustrations. He set aside illustration
work, including poster art and concentrated on western
paintings for the fine arts market. Brown's skills well
developed through his many years of illustrating, made
his work popular and he sold about 250 oil paintings.
These covered not only the west; they included portraits,
harbor scenes and landscapes. He also sold work in
charcoal, pencil, pastel and watercolor. |
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Brown suffered a severe stroke in 1976. His left side
was completely paralyzed. With the help of Mary Louise,
he was able to retrain himself. Although unable to do the
detailed and highly representational work of his
pre-stroke years, he was none-the-less able to do produce
some powerful drawings and beautiful landscape paintings
of Nebraska, where he settled in 1983 and remained until
his death in 1991. |
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His wife, Mary Louise, always at his side, continues
to paint in pastel. She is now 79. |