I recently discovered the work of Leo Dillon, a brilliant illustrator who, in 1976, became the first Black artist in 40 years to win the prestigious Caldecott Medal for “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” Dillon, who was born to Trinidadian parents in East New York, worked alongside his wife Diane (who is white) for over 50 years and together produced an astonishing body of work. (They also, it turns out, lived and worked in my neighborhood of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, until Leo’s death in 2012 at the age of 79.) As far as I know, despite being prolific and lauded in the fields of science-fiction and children’s book art, this poster for the 1967 Hollywood adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novella The Fox is the only movie poster that the Dillons ever illustrated. With its sinuous curves, cleverly interlocking faces, expressive use of color, sinister silhouettes, and dramatic use of negative space, it is an absolute beauty which it makes it a shame that the Dillons were not more regularly commissioned for movie poster work.
It’s even more of a shame because there have been notably few Black artists in the history of movie poster design. At best there may have been those who had to work anonymously within the studio system. The title of John Duke Kisch’s essential 2014 book, Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster Art, is a bit misleading: the book documents a superb collection of poster art for Black movies—along with an excellent written history of Black cinema—but it has little to say about the artists behind the posters. Those who are credited in the footnotes are mostly the artists of Polish, Swedish, and Italian posters for Black films, whose names are known by their signatures. As Tony Nourmand writes in his introduction, “Many poster artists—both inside and outside Hollywood—never signed their work. This was especially true in America, which makes the task of assigning authorship almost impossible... What can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that at least until the second half of the twentieth century (likely even later), the vast majority of these poster artists were white; white men working to the design specifications provided by white male studio bosses.”
Leo Dillon and Diane Sorber were born 11 days apart in 1933, she in California and he in New York. They met at Parson’s School of Design—which Leo attended on the G.I. Bill after three years in the Navy—where an initial rivalry turned into an extraordinary lifelong partnership. They graduated in 1956 and married the following year and for over half a century they worked in tandem on the same illustrations, one sketching and outlining and the other coloring and then passing the work back and forth until it was finished.
They initially worked as book cover illustrators for science-fiction and fantasy authors, creating over 100 covers in the 1960s and early ’70s. Their work in this genre is extraordinary and very much in the style of their poster for The Fox. This is just a small sample of their covers for Ace paperbacks.
This 1969 poster for their local coffee shop in Cobble Hill, named Ground Zero, is also very much in the art nouveau-esque style of The Fox.
They had a long and fruitful association and friendship with the prolific sci-fi and crime novelist Harlan Ellison, producing many of his covers over the years in a variety of styles.
And they illustrated album covers for the record company Caedmon, a pioneer in the audio book industry.
They also illustrated a series of covers for the novels of James Baldwin. Their work in science-fiction—a field not known for its racial diversity—had been notably and deliberately racially non-specific for the most part, but the Baldwin covers allowed them to illustrate black faces.
In the 1970s, motivated no doubt by the birth of their son in 1965, they pivoted to children’s book illustration. They won the Caldecott Medal in 1976 for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, a West-African folk tale retold by Verna Aardema and again in 1977 for Margaret Musgrove’s Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, becoming the only artists to win the award in consecutive years.
The Dillons’ work in children’s book illustration is striking for its racial diversity, and was especially so in the 1970s, when black and brown faces in children’s literature were rare. (Even as recently as 2013, of 3,200 children’s books published that year, just 93 were about Black people.)
As Leo’s New York Times obituary said:
Their emphasis on inclusion sprang from their experience as an interracial couple. As they often explained in interviews, after their son, Lee, was born in the 1960s, they surreptitiously colored the skin of characters in the picture books they bought him, recasting them as black, Hispanic and Asian.
Their work set a benchmark for racial representation in children’s books. They illustrated the 1973 children’s book Blast Off by Linda C. Cain and Susan Rosenbaum, about a young Black girl who becomes an astronaut.
And their work continued to be defiantly and joyously diverse over the course of more than 50 children’s books as their style evolved dramatically.
Above: “Astronaut,” source and date unknown.
Above: cover illustration for Little Fox’s Dream by Betty Boegehold (1976).
Above: two of the Dillons’ illustrations for Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton (1995).
Above: cover illustration for In Praise of Our Fathers and Our Mothers: A Black Family Treasury by Outstanding Authors and Artists (1997).
Above: poster promoting the Dillon’s own children’s book Jazz on a Saturday Night (2007).
In 2008 Diane and Leo were awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Illustrators. By this time they had received nearly every award in their field (sometimes more than once), including three New York Times Best Illustrated Book awards, the Society of Illustrators’ Gold Medal, and the NAACP Image award. But, unless I’m wrong, they never did another movie poster.
Above: Leo and Diane Dillon. Photo on the right by Beth Gwynn.
This article merely scratches the surface of the Dillons’ lifetime of work. For a comprehensive collection of their covers and other work visit The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon. For more of their sci-fi covers visit Just Seeds, and for an article on Leo’s early solo work check out Flying Cars and Food Pills.