US one sheet for Head Over Heels (Joan Micklin Silver, USA, 1979). Illustration by Nancy Stahl.
One of my favorite movie posters of the 1970s is this illustrated piece for Head Over Heels, a film by Joan Micklin Silver better known now as Chilly Scenes of Winter. Though it was based on Ann Beattie’s 1976 debut novel of the same name, the film was released with the title Head Over Heels in 1979. Wanting to promote the film as a lighthearted rom-com, United Artists rejected the original title and when 20th Century Fox refused to surrender the rights to the producers’ preferred alt title of Laura (already the title of one of their tentpoles, of course), they adopted the alternative Head Over Heels, which the producers had initially suggested as a bit of a joke.
Head Over Heels ran in New York for nine weeks from October 19 through December 20 at the Trans-Lux East on 3rd Avenue and 58th St before being replaced by Roller Boogie (“It’s Love on Wheels”). Films stayed in theaters for much longer half a century ago, but two months in one theater was quite respectable, especially when you consider that Head Over Heels opened against Blake Edwards’s blockbuster 10. (Coincidentally, Blake Edwards had complained to The New York Times that month about Orion’s handling of his film, especially its “vulgar, sexist” poster and ad campaign).
The pre-opening full-page Sunday New York Times ad for Head Over Heels (October 14, 1979).
But by its second week in theaters, the newspaper ad campaign had changed from the beautiful poster illustration (which, as you can see above, didn’t reproduce as well in black and white newsprint) to a smiling photograph of the films’ stars, John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt.
Left: The revised ad campaign for Head Over Heels in The New York Times (November 2, 1979). Right: The rerelease ad for the renamed Chilly Scenes of Winter almost three years later (August 13, 1982).
Despite its two-month run, the film was considered to have underperformed, and in August 1982, after a petition by Joan Micklin Silver and the cast to rerelease the film under its original title, it was rereleased by United Artists Classics. The new version lopped off the original happy ending (which had also been in the original novel), and came with a much more downbeat photography-based poster and ad campaign.
Partly because of its original poster and partly because of my love of Micklin Silver’s follow-up film Crossing Delancey (1988), Chilly Scenes of Winter had long been a holy grail of mine. It was nearly impossible to see for many years and after finally seeing it last year I took a closer look at the original poster and all its beautiful details, like the stitches of John Heard’s wool scarf. It was while doing so that I noticed a quite distinctive signature on the poster for one Nancy Stahl. And it didn’t take me long to discover that Stahl is a renowned illustrator best known as a pioneer of digital design and for her postage stamp work for the USPS. (In fact, in a bit of serendipity, I discovered that the sheet of Manatee postage stamps on my kitchen pinboard was her work.) She was inducted into the Illustrators Hall of Fame by the Society of Illustrators in 2012.
I contacted Stahl and learned that while she had only designed three finished movie posters in her long and illustrious career, she had worked on a number of others and had much that was of interest to say about the subject. I was thrilled when she agreed to an interview.
Left: Nancy Stahl photographed by Marty Umans. Right: Her signature on the Head Over Heels poster.
NOTEBOOK: You were an established illustrator by the time you started illustrating movie posters. What were your main areas of design in the 1970s?
NANCY STAHL: I began by taking my portfolio around to small design studios here in New York, and I’d work in whatever style they needed for their projects. I started with graphite drawings for children’s textbooks in 1972, but it was surprising how quickly that evolved into working with what was called “women’s magazines” and then The New York Times, the Daily News, and The Wall Street Journal. Also, since I had a full time job in textiles my first two years, I knew how to draw fabric for clothing ads. Most of my work in the beginning was black and white, although I experimented with different materials for almost every job.
NOTEBOOK: I’ve heard you tell that your entry into the world of color illustration was a spec portrait you did of Clark Gable. Were you a big movie fan growing up, and did the Gable portrait lead to a lot of portrait work?
STAHL: Once I joined with an agent, Vicki Morgan, I started getting more color jobs. I had wanted to expand my work into more serious subject matter and decided I needed it to be more solid, not light and airy as the watercolor with color pencil which I had first transitioned to since it wasn’t much of a stretch after all my pencil work.
The painting of Clark Gable was an example to show Vicki what I wanted to achieve when she first took me on. She convinced me to bring it along when we went to meet J. C. [Jean-Claude] Suares at New York Magazine. He gave me work in that style right away, even though I didn’t have anything else like it to show. I did a few covers and some inside illustrations for him which was great exposure.
I can’t claim to have been a big movie fan simply because I rarely had the chance to go to the movies growing up. But I loved stills from the ’30s and ’40s and watched tons of movies of that era on TV. The photographs were so elegant and far from everyday life in the suburbs. I fell in love with a photo I had of Clark Gable and at that time it wasn’t a crime to do a painting based on an existing photograph. It was an homage. And it proved that I could achieve likenesses.
NOTEBOOK: In the ’70s, American studios started to rely more on photography than illustration for movie posters. Was illustrating movie posters something that you had always wanted to do as an artist or was it something that fell into your lap?
STAHL: I can remember in the mid to late ’70s standing outside movie theaters along Broadway and feeling so jealous that I hadn’t done a poster when that was such a great area for illustration. In my recollection, as many posters were drawn as were photographed, or more, since it was cheaper to hire one illustrator rather than both a photographer plus a retoucher.
Friends and I would dissect the latest illustrations used to promote movies and sometimes forget that the films were what our friends who weren’t illustrators were talking about. The same with Broadway plays: Once, someone was going on about a poster saying it was Waterston and I said, “No, it’s Davis!” Turned out he was an actor talking about Sam Waterston, the actor, while I was talking about Paul Davis, the illustrator of the poster.
NOTEBOOK: I love your 1979 poster for Head Over Heels. Did that go through many different versions before you hit on the finished piece? Were you involved in the title design at all (that yellow box with a border of dots) or was that added by a graphic designer?
STAHL: I didn’t do the typography (I did the title on my first poster, Newsfront, but it was very rare for me to get involved in the design), and I certainly didn’t stick that yellow box on top of my drawing. Yuck. Everything was spelled out beforehand for me to do the art. A committee had decided on the ski chalet and the hug and the big head of John Heard with the glasses sporting windshield wipers wiping away the snow. So, it was just a matter of giving them what they asked for, no real back and forth. If it had been up to me it would have been a lot simpler. That’s probably why I didn’t get too many movie poster jobs.
NOTEBOOK: Your artwork for Head Over Heels is signed with your distinctive signature, which is how I found out about your work. It was quite unusual for American movie poster illustrators to sign their work unless they were a big name, like Norman Rockwell or Bob Peak. Some would hide their signatures in the artwork. Were you allowed to sign yours because of your standing as an illustrator, did you negotiate having your signature on there, or did you just add it as a matter of course and no one questioned it?
STAHL: I really didn’t remember that I had signed that one. There was a time when Vicki would ask whether or not they wanted a signature, then one time an art director responded, “Of course I want her to sign it. When you buy an IZOD Lacoste shirt, you want the crocodile on it!” So we stopped asking. I often didn’t sign when the messenger was waiting in my living room and I was having to pack the art up quickly, to avoid getting charged an extra fee. Or when I didn’t feel good about the final.
NOTEBOOK: Is Head Over Heels painted in gouache, which became your medium of choice in the 1980s?
STAHL: No, that is an example of my watercolor with color pencil on top. You got me to look up my jobs in my ledger and remind myself that I worked in the two styles at the same time for about four or five years. It was confusing to art directors. They often thought my portfolio was the work of multiple artists, so I dropped the watercolor since I was tired of it and thought I’d get more serious jobs with gouache.
NOTEBOOK: How did you feel when Head Over Heels was rereleased as Chilly Scenes of Winter with a rather mundane photographic poster? Or were you even aware of that at the time? What was the working title when you were working on it?
STAHL: Oh, I was a tiny bit disappointed, but really too busy at the time to worry about it. I think I heard that the movie started out with the Chilly Scenes title but the publicity people weren’t considering it for the poster from our first conversations. Or maybe they told me they were wanting to convince the client to change the title. Since I wasn’t involved with the type, I wasn’t really included in those discussions, but I do remember them saying it needed to be made more upbeat to attract theatergoers.
US one sheet for Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, Australia, 1978). Illustration by Nancy Stahl.
NOTEBOOK: As you mentioned earlier, you illustrated a poster for Philip Noyce’s Newsfront in 1978. Is there anything in particular you can tell me about that poster?
STAHL: That was my first movie poster. It was for New Yorker Films. I’m pretty sure that was the time they had me go to their theater and watch the movie all by myself in the middle of the day. I was so excited and scared. My memory is that they may have told me which actors would be featured, but little else. I remember it as a dream job. One where they loved my sketch and even the lettering that I drew to suggest where it might go. I did the finish and that was also appreciated. No changes. That’s my memory. A perfect job.
NOTEBOOK: In the late ’80s you transitioned to digital illustration. Because of that, I assumed that your 1989 poster for the Scorsese/Coppola/Woody Allen anthology film New York Stories is all digital and vector-based. Is it?
STAHL: That was a large gouache painting, not digital. You can see why my move to vectors was pretty seamless by looking at where I was at the time. Gouache is a very temperamental medium. And I worked from dark colors to light, which means the entire board—30" x 40", I believe—was painted the very velvety dark blue...the darkest color. Then the building was painted, then the sky…dark to light. The thing is, you can’t put too many layers of gouache on top of each other; it can bleed through, it can crack and peel. But this required many layers in order to cover the base thoroughly.
US one sheet for New York Stories (Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, USA, 1989). Illustration by Nancy Stahl.
NOTEBOOK: Was there a specific brief for that poster or did you have a number of different concepts?
STAHL: I was told to paint a brownstone with three levels of windows but to leave the windows blank for their decision-making on what was to be in one window per floor.
They told me the characters they wanted in the windows: a jazz saxophone player, Woody Allen, and I forget the third. I painted it up. It went FedEx to LA. I crossed my fingers that it would survive the flight. They wanted changes. The World Trade Center added and oh, the brownstone shouldn’t be the color of a brownstone. Something lighter. So I suggested limestone. They agreed.
More meetings after I finished that… The painting went NYC to LA three times. Woody Allen liked it. It was overdue. Finally, they decided that the sax player would go. Frances Ford Coppola’s daughter would be in one window and Nick Nolte in another, but they needed it the next day. So, with my permission, Vicki asked one of her artists in LA to do those two figures. That was sad for me after months of work.
And to top it off, the VHS tape of it came out much later with the building’s color changed to magenta! A magenta brownstone! That bothered me much more than Chilly Scenes of Winter.
The VHS box cover for New York Stories.
NOTEBOOK: The New York Stories art is not signed. Was there a reason for that?
STAHL: I think they told me there would be lots of credits across the bottom, so I shouldn’t sign it because they hadn’t worked out where it could all go, yet.
NOTEBOOK: Were there other movie poster illustrations that you worked on that didn’t make it to finish?
STAHL: Yes, Happy Birthday, Gemini [1980]. They really wanted a frolicking, sexy image and it wasn’t a good fit for me. I kept putting clothes on the character that Madeline Kahn played. Their “sexy” was my “sexist.” I never saw the movie but take great pleasure in seeing now that has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 15 percent. [The film was released with a poster illustrated by Mad magazine’s Jack Davis.]
And I was involved in beginning rounds with a French movie directed by Diane Kurys, Peppermint Soda [1977], a tiny bit with Silverado [1985], and only roughs with The Milagro Beanfield War [1988].
NOTEBOOK: What was the process for movie poster illustration in the ’70s and ’80s? Did you have an agent who would get work for you? Were you commissioned to do those posters, or did you have a relationship with a studio who would ask you to do certain jobs?
STAHL: Yes, these all came about through my agent. The closest I came to having a relationship with a studio was New Yorker Films. But I messed that up when I tried to insert my ideas and failed in a meeting with some people from Gaumont for Peppermint Soda. Also, the art director who had initially called me moved on to another job.
NOTEBOOK: Was movie poster illustration any more or less lucrative than other forms of advertising work, or book cover design?
STAHL: Generally it was more. Disney paid well for New York Stories but they ran me ragged. Newsfront and Head Over Heels were closer to editorial fees, but they paid again when it was used in different markets, or on the paperback book that came out with my art on the cover in the case of Head Over Heels.
Left: The half-sheet poster for Head Over Heels. Right: The tie-in paperback.
NOTEBOOK: Unlike today, there were very few American women in the ’70s and ’80s, or prior to that, who were movie poster illustrators; there were more in Eastern Europe. Obviously commercial illustration at the time was very male-dominated, but would you say it was equally so in all areas of illustration?
STAHL: It was male-dominated and men got jobs in all areas, whereas I was originally expected to do fashion, women’s magazines, and children’s publications only. That’s why I wanted a more solid style and why in the beginning I never signed using my first name. I didn’t want limitations set for me. When I started signing using first and last, it was because I felt there was less typecasting. And by then there were more women art directors.
NOTEBOOK: What styles of illustration have influenced you the most?
STAHL: Well, my gouache work was definitely influenced by travel posters of the ’30s and ’40s. And my color pencil style was energized by examining the beautiful work of George Stavrinos and Richard Amsel.
NOTEBOOK: What are some of your favorite movie posters by other artists?
STAHL: I always loved Metropolis [1927, illustrated by Heinz Schulz-Neudamm]. Abel Gance’s Napoleon [1927] was the only movie poster I ever bought. Don’t know the illustrator’s name. I saw it when the movie was restored and presented at Radio City Music Hall with a live orchestra in 1981. Jaws [1975, illustrated by Roger Kastel] was very different at the time, so it stopped me in my tracks. I love Ralph Steadman’s illustrations for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson [2008], for the sheer release of energy.
NOTEBOOK: Are any of your own movie posters framed in your house or studio?
STAHL: No. They’re probably rolled up in a closet around here. I didn’t get more than one copy of each. But here’s a funny story: Many years after Head Over Heels came out, I ran into John Heard in a neighborhood health food store. I had seen him on the street previously so I figured he lived nearby. After he checked out, I got up the nerve to approach him and said something about having been the artist for his movie poster. Then I tried to sound humble by apologizing for it not really showing off his likeness, what with the scarf and glasses covering much of his features. I expected to get a chance to say that it wasn’t my fault, the publicity people asked for those things. Instead he said, “Oh, yeah, I have a good stack of them in my apartment. They came in handy at Thanksgiving as a booster seat for my kids seated on a bench. That’s all they were good for!” I only had the one copy which I think was tattered so I really wanted to ask him for a few, but he turned and walked out. Kind of sad.
NOTEBOOK: Are you still doing commercial illustration work today?
STAHL: No, the pandemic just sort of knocked me out and I thought, “Why do I stay up all night? I can’t stay up all night anymore.” I’m happy doing my own projects but I don’t have to stay sitting in front of the computer when I’m really aching to get away.
Nancy Stahl’s Manatee stamps for the USPS.
Many thanks to Nancy. You can see more of her work on her website, nancystahl.com.