Richard Amsel

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Richard Amsel (1947-1985) was an American illustrator and graphic designer.

Richard Amsel was born in Philadelphia in December, 1947. While a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, his proposed poster art for the Barbra Streisand musical Hello, Dolly! was selected by 20th Century Fox for the film’s campaign after a nationwide artists’ talent search; the artist was only 22 at the time.

Poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark, designed by Richard Amsel.

Amsel quickly found enormous popularity within New York's art scene, and his illustrations soon caught the attention of a young singer/songwriter named Barry Manilow, who at the time was working with a newly emerging entertainer in cabaret clubs and piano bars. Manilow introduced the two, and it was quickly decided that Amsel should do the cover of her first Atlantic Records album.

The artist's cover, for Bette Midler's The Divine Miss M, proved to be one of the most ubiquitous of the year, and more album covers and posters soon followed, as well as a series of magazine ads for designer Oleg Cassini.

More movie posters materialized, and for some of the most important and popular films of the 1970s: The Champ, Chinatown, Julia, The Last Picture Show, The Last Tycoon, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Muppet Movie, Murder on the Orient Express, Nashville, Papillon, The Shootist, and The Sting among them. (The latter's poster design paid homage to the painting syle of J.C. Leyendecker, evoking both his famous "Arrow Collar Man" and beloved Saturday Evening Post covers.)

Though brief, Amsel's career was certainly prolific. By the decade's end his movie posters alone matched or exceeded the creative output of many of his contemporaries. His work graced the cover of Time magazine -- a portrait of comedienne Lily Tomlin, now housed in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. In keeping with the magazine's stringent deadlines, Amsel's illustration was created in only two or three days.

The key to his success, beyond raw talent, was the unique quality of his work and illustrative style. Amsel could perfectly evoke period nostalgia (his posters for The Sting and westerns such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller come to mind), while also producing something timeless and iconic, perfectly befitting both something old and something new. And however different his approach from one assignment to the other, all would bear his instantly recognizable stamp.

In 1972, TV Guide commissioned Amsel to do a cover featuring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, coinciding with a telefilm about their love affair. Thus began Amsel's thirteen year association with the entertainment magazine, resulting in over 40 covers -- a record held to this day. (Not unlike Leyendecker's record for The Saturday Evening Post.)

The "Amsel covers", now prized collector's items, feature portraits of such figures as Mary Tyler Moore, John Travolta, Elvis Presley, Ingrid Bergman, Johnny Carson, Tom Selleck, Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Princess Grace and Katharine Hepburn. Particularly notable issues include Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh for Gone with the Wind's television debut, the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, and Richard Chamberlain for the miniseries Shogun.

Yet perhaps the most beloved is Amsel's portrait of Lucille Ball, done for the magazine's July 6th, 1974 issue honoring the comedienne's retirement from series television. "I did not want the portrait to be of Lucy Ricardo," Amsel explained, "but I didn't want a modern-day Lucy Carter either. I wanted it to have the same timeless sense of glamour that Lucy herself has. She is, after all, a former Goldwyn Girl. I hoped to capture the essence of all this."

Amsel's work so impressed Ms. Ball that the artwork was later prominently featured in the opening credits of a two-hour television tribute, CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years. Years later, representations of Amsel's covers were placed on exhibit at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, commemorating TV Guide's fortieth anniversary.

The 1980s marked a dramatic change in movie marketing campaigns, with more and more employing photographs in favor of illustrations. Movie poster artists now faced a narrower field in which to compete, often limited to science fiction, fantasy, and adventure films. The old masters like Bob Peak -- whose bold, striking campaigns for Camelot, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Superman, and Apocalypse Now helped redefine the very nature of movie poster art -- seemed increasingly dated in their style, and had to make way for a new generation of artists (notably Drew Struzan).

Yet Amsel remained productive, his trademark signature becoming a widely recognizable fixture on further magazine covers and movie posters, including such high profile, "event" films as the colorful, campy Flash Gordon, and the elaborate fantasy The Dark Crystal. But perhaps his work for the adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark remains the artist’s most famous. Amsel did two separate posters, one for the film’s initial 1981 release and another for its re-release a year later; George Lucas and Steven Spielberg reportedly own the originals, respectively.

Amsel's output garnered numerous awards, from the New York and Los Angeles Society of Illustrators, a Grammy Award, a Golden Key Award from The Hollywood Reporter, and citations from the Philadelphia Art Director's Club.

His last film poster was for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the third of George Miller's apocalyptic action movies with Mel Gibson. His final completed artwork was for an issue of TV Guide, featuring news anchors Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather.

Amsel died less than three weeks later, succumbing to complications from AIDS on November 17, 1985. When he fell ill, he was to have done the poster for the Romancing the Stone sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.