SEA WOLVES

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1980 Andrew V. McLaglen War Movie THE SEA WOLVES, based on the book by James Leasor and starring Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, David Niven, Trevor Howard, Barbara Kellermann, Patrick Macnee, Kenneth Griffith and Patrick Allen.

This true story follows the exploits of a top secret British military mission to destroy Nazi radio ships in a neutral harbor during WWII.

Poster art by Arnaldo Putzu (1927 – 2012).

After studying art in Rome Arnaldo Putzu met poster artist Enrico de Seta in 1948 whilst doing illustration work in Milan. De Seta took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming post-war Italian film industry. In the early 1950s Putzu went freelance working for, among others, Augusto Favalli, a fine artist who had set up a commercial studio in 1946 employing several artists and collaborating with the production company Lux Film.

Around the same time John Davis of the Rank Organisation asked Eric Pulford, then creative head of Rank’s Downton Advertising, to produce some special brochures for their Italian office. Pulford flew out to Rome and worked alongside Augusto Favalli and his team of artists. When Favalli died in 1969 some of the artists, including Putzu, moved to London to work with Pulford, whose expanding company by then was producing poster art for several major film companies.

Poster design by Vic Fair (18 March 1938 – 24 February 2017).

Vic Fair is recognised as one of the most significant designers working on British Film Posters during the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Chadwell Heath, Essex and did evening classes at St. Martin’s College of Art. He worked in the Arthur S. Dixon agency (who had accounts with Columbis, Disney and Warwick) from 1954 until the 1965 merger with Downtons, becoming Downton-Dixon, under the aegis of Eric Pulford. “..there was a young fella called Vic Fair. Marvellous! In those days he was about 20 but I could see the possibilities and every time I got a job I used to give Vic the chance to design a poster for it and that went on for years and he never got one accepted. And then he did. And then he became a severe competitor to me. And designing the posters he did the same as me, he would sometimes do finished artwork, not very often, but he would get either Brian Bysouth or Fratini to do the finished artwork.” (Eric Pulford). Probably his most well-known poster artwork was for David Bowie’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth” in 1976.

The poster is in very good folded condition.