LIFE FOR RUTH

Original British 30 inch x 39 inch Quad Poster for the 1962 Basil Dearden Drama LIFE FOR RUTH, based on the play and with a screenplay by Janet Green and starring Michael Craig, Patrick McGoohan, Janet Munro, Paul Rogers, Megs Jenkins, Frank Finlay, Michael Bryant, Norman Wooland, Walter Hudd, Michael Aldridge, Basil Dignam, Kenneth J. Warren and Brian Wilde.

Craig is the father who refuses to allow his dying daughter to undergo a blood transfusion because of his fundamentalist religious convictions in this moving account of a clash between belief and medical practice.

Poster design 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 very good folded condition with small tear at the left edge, a tiny hole at the centre right cross fold and a minor cross fold tear in the vertical centre fold. The poster has not been trimmed, all quads for this film are the same size.