The Skirball Cultural Center presents
SAUL BASS: THE HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION
January 4–April 1, 2007
Free general admission to this exhibition

Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90049 (Exit Skirball Center Drive off the 405)
(310) 440-4500

Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection, an exhibition focusing on the graphic designer’s acclaimed work for the American film industry, will be on view at the Skirball Cultural Center from January 4 through April 1, 2007. The exhibition will include more than 20 movie posters and six soundtrack-album covers designed by Bass for such films as Vertigo (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Exodus (1960) and In Harm’s Way (1965). It will also feature, on continuous loop, a rare 22-minute montage—edited by Bass and his wife, Elaine—of many of Bass’s motion-picture title sequences, from The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) to The Age of Innocence (1993). These are recognized as among the most innovative title sequences ever produced in Hollywood. Alternately screened with the montage will be Why Man Creates (1968), the Oscar-winning short documentary Bass produced and co-directed with Elaine Bass.

Saul Bass (1920–1996) attended the Art Students League in Manhattan in his native New York. He then studied at Brooklyn College under the painter, designer and educator Gyorgy Kepes, a Hungarian émigré who had collaborated with Bauhaus artist and professor László Moholy-Nagy in 1930s Berlin. Kepes introduced his student to the Bauhaus movement and to Russian Constructivism, the styles of which influenced Bass’s art.

Following his schooling, Bass began working as a commercial artist in New York, but he felt constrained by the creative limitations of the city’s advertising agencies. Bass moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and opened his own studio, Saul Bass & Associates, in 1952. During his distinguished career, Bass became a graphic-design legend for conceiving the corporate identity packages of such companies as AT&T, Warner Communications and United Airlines. The logos he created for these business giants are considered among the most instantly recognized in 20th-century American popular culture.

Award-winning filmmaker Otto Preminger was the first to offer Bass the opportunity to design a title sequence, for the film Carmen Jones (1954). Bass approached the formerly unremarkable moments before the film began as an opportunity to set audience mood and enhance entertainment value, not just list credits. The following year, for the opening sequence to Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm, Bass used an animated paper cut-out of a disjointed arm, which helped draw the audience into the film’s tale of drug addiction from the very first frames. On view will be the now-famous and often-imitated title sequence for The Man with the Golden Arm along with the poster and soundtrack-album cover, both of which repeated the disjointed-arm motif. Taken together, these works reveal the visual identity Bass created for the film as a whole.

From this groundbreaking early work, Bass would eventually work with illustrious filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer, Billy Wilder and many more. These directors valued Bass’s innovative use of animation, live action and dynamic typography. Bass—who, beginning with Spartacus (1960), worked in collaboration with his wife, Elaine—created more than 50 title sequences and fully integrated advertising campaigns for such celebrated films as North by Northwest (1959) West Side Story (1961), Vertigo, Exodus and Grand Prix (1966). The title sequences for these films are featured in the exhibition’s montage. For Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Bass not only contributed the title sequence but helped to storyboard the film. A reproduction of Bass’s storyboard for the film’s classic shower scene will also be displayed in the exhibition.

After winning, in 1969, the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subjects, for Why Man Creates, an animated film exploring the nature of creativity, Bass took a nearly decade-long hiatus from film work and focused on his landmark graphic-design campaigns for companies worldwide.

The Basses returned to the movies in the 1980s, producing the title sequences, among many others, for Danny De Vito’s War of the Roses (1989), Billy Crystal’s Mr. Saturday Night (1992) and Martin Scorcese’s GoodFellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991). The montage in the exhibition includes these later works. In 1991 and 1993–1996, Bass designed the official posters for the Academy Awards, all of which will be displayed in the exhibition. Bass had served as a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors for nine years.

Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection will be on view in the Skirball’s Ruby Gallery and Hurd Gallery. The exhibition is free to the public. It is presented as part of the Skirball’s Our California series, exploring the changing cultural, social and civic forces that have shaped California.

Related film screenings: During the run of Saul Bass: The Hollywood Connection, the Skirball will present free Tuesday afternoon screenings of the following films for which Saul Bass created the title sequences and advertising campaigns: Psycho (January 9) Vertigo (January 23), Anatomy of a Murder (February 6) and Bonjour Tristesse (February 27). The Skirball will also show Phase IV, a rarely screened science-fiction film directed by Bass (February 22).