This 1926 poster for a little-known tenement-set silent drama Sunshine of Paradise Alley grabbed my attention recently. Though it conforms to a lot of the conventions of 1920s movie posters, especially in the billing, there is something ineffably not-of-its period about the image. Maybe it’s the coloring (that yellow face, reminiscent in its oddity of Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl, painted 26 years later) or maybe it’s the tousled hair of star Barbara Bedford, so unlike 1920s movie star styles. And then there’s that beautiful title treatment (the same color as the face) with its unconventional “S”s and stacked “L”s.
Another unusual aspect of the poster is that it is signed—a quite uncommon occurrence in the 20s. (I wrote previously about Henry Clive who was an exception to the rule). The artist was Josef Bakos (1891-1977), a New York-born son of Polish immigrants who was a founding member of “Los Cinco Pintores,...
Another unusual aspect of the poster is that it is signed—a quite uncommon occurrence in the 20s. (I wrote previously about Henry Clive who was an exception to the rule). The artist was Josef Bakos (1891-1977), a New York-born son of Polish immigrants who was a founding member of “Los Cinco Pintores,...
- 3/15/2014
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
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