Saul Bass  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Oscar-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos.

During his 40-year career, Bass worked for some of Hollywood's most prominent filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Among his best known title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of a skyscraper in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.

Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the Bell System logo in 1969, as well as AT&T's globe logo in 1983 after the breakup of the Bell System. He also designed Continental Airlines' 1968 jet stream logo and United Airlines' 1974 tulip logo, which became some of the most recognized airline industry logos of the era. He died from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Los Angeles on April 25, 1996, at the age of 75.

Filmmaker

Bass famously claimed that he directed the highlight of Psycho, the tightly edited shower-murder sequence, though many on set at the time (including star Janet Leigh) dispute this contention.

In 1964, he directed a short film titled The Searching Eye and shown during the 1964 New York World's Fair, coproduced with Sy Wexler. He later made a short documentary film called Why Man Creates, which won an Academy Award in 1968.

In 1974, he made his only feature length film as a director, the visually splendid though little-known science fiction film Phase IV

Selected film title sequences

• Carmen Jones (1954)
• The Big Knife (1955)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• The Racers (1955)
• The Seven Year Itch (1955)
• The Shrike (1955)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
• Storm Center (1956)
• Attack (1956)
• Edge of the City (1957)
• Saint Joan (1957)
• The Pride and the Passion (1957)
• The Young Stranger (1957)
• Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
• Cowboy (1958)
• Vertigo (1958)
• The Big Country (1958)
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
• North by Northwest (1959)
• Psycho (1960)
• Spartacus (1960)
• The Facts of Life (1960)
• Exodus (1960)
• Ocean's 11 (1960)
• West Side Story (1961)
• Something Wild (1961)
• Advise & Consent (1962)
• Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
• The Victors (1963)
• Nine Hours to Rama (1963)
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
• The Cardinal (1963)
• In Harm's Way (1965)
• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
• Grand Prix (1966)
• Not with My Wife, You Don't! (1966)
• Seconds (1966)
• Such Good Friends (1971)
• That's Entertainment, Part II (1976)
• Broadcast News (1987)
• Big (1988)
• The War of the Roses (1989)
• Goodfellas (1990)
• Cape Fear (1991)
• Doc Hollywood (1991)
• Mr. Saturday Night (1992)
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Higher Learning (1995)
• Casino (1995)
• A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)