PLANTER’S WIFE

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1952 Ken Annakin Adventure THE PLANTER’S WIFE, based on the novel by Sidney Charles George and starring Jack Hawkins, Claudette Colbert, Ram Gopal, Jeremy Spenser, Anthony Steel, Peter Asher, Tom Macaulay, Sonya Hana, Andy Ho, Yah Ming, Ng Cheuk Kwong, Alfie Bass, Bill Travers and Victor Maddern.

The film is set against the backdrop of the Malayan Emergency and focuses on a rubber planter and his neighbours who are fending off a campaign of sustained attacks by Communist insurgents while also struggling to save their marriage.

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.

Poster printed by The Haycock Press Ltd., London S.E.5

The poster is in very good condition and has been Conservation Paper-Backed.