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Original Pencil Artwork for Billboard and Color Rendering (Artboard 1: 12.5" x 16.5" & Artboard 2: 15.5" x 15.5")
Very Fine; Artwork by Jim Pearsall
Paramount, 1974

When searching for Jim Pearsall on Google, you can find a movie poster quote that says "Jim Pearsall was a one-hit wonder, but what a hit it was!" While Jim Pearsall worked at the now-defunct movie marketing company, Diener Hauser Bates Advertising, he created the artwork for the 1974 film "Chinatown", which is considered one of the greatest movie posters of all time. Apart from the 1975 B-movie "Breakout" starring Charles Bronson, there are no other credited movie poster commissions for him.

The collection includes two art boards for a Billboard Study. The first is an original piece measuring 12.5" x 16.5", created with graphite on tissue and mounted onto a thin artboard using tape. In the lower-left corner, there's a credit block piece measuring 1.5" x 4.5" attached to the tissue, crediting "written by Robert Towne" along with the studio credit. A minor .25" tear in the lower left corner does not affect the artwork. Over time, the tissue has yellowed, yet it still prominently displays a strong pencil illustration of the main characters, Nicholson and Dunaway, and the film's title. This original artwork is likely the work of Jim Pearsall. The second item is a 15.5" x 15.5" color print mounted on an illustration board. Despite significant wear from production, the central art image remains largely unblemished. The artist's signature, "JP" (Jim Pearsall), is in the print in the lower right corner.

Jack Nicholson gives one of his best performances as private detective Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski's complex and murky noir mystery, which won an Oscar for its screenplay, by Robert Towne.

Estimate: $1,500 - 3,000
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