TIGER IN THE SMOKE 1956 Muriel Pavlow, Donald Sinden ERIC PULFORD QUAD POSTER

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1956 Roy Ward Baker Thriller TIGER IN THE SMOKE, based on the novel by Marjorie Allingham and starring Tony Wright, Muriel Pavlow, Donald Sinden, Alec Clunes, Laurence Naismith, Christopher Rhodes, Kenneth Griffith, Bernard Miles, Charles Victor, Thomas Heathcote, Sam Kydd, Beatrice Varley, Stratford Johns, Gerald Harper, Percy Herbert, Marianne Stone and Brian Wilde.

A gang of war veterans masquerading as street musicians are searching the London underworld for Jack Havoc (Tony Wright), their former sergeant, who, during a wartime commando raid on a French Chateau, deprived them of some hidden loot.

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.

Printed by Charles & Read Ltd., London & Harlow

The poster is in good to very good folded condition with a piece out of the right border and a 4 inch tear at the left edge.