History of Film Posters

The earliest forms of advertising for movies included hand painted crates and sandwich boards. The turn of the 20th Century saw a world with a very high illiteracy rate. Posters or advertising for any entertainment needed to have vibrant colors and pictures and a limited amount of words, so that the advertising could be appreciated by a large number of people.

Movie posters are the bait that lures you into the theater. Motion pictures began more than 100 years ago, and today it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Movies and movie posters go hand in hand in helping the public identify their favorite films and stars.

At first, movies used advertising paper sizes from vaudeville, fairs, and the circus. With the growth of movie theaters, there was a need for more specialized sizes. This was when they created inserts and lobby cards.

In the early days of film, there were no movie stars on movie posters because most actors in film chose to be anonymous. The producers were thrilled, because they believed they could control the medium as long as there were no stars.

By 1910, the studios began to receive mail addressed to these nameless actors. The public demanded to know the names of the actors and actresses.

Producers soon realized that they could make much more money by acknowledging the stars that would bring the people into the theater, and so posters changed. Posters at this point reflected the status of the leading lady and leading man. The public would soon recognize the star status simply by looking at the movie poster. The size and placement of the print told the public just how “big” a particular star was. Actors and actresses took heed of this and started to become more powerful in demanding their due.

With more films being produced and more movie houses being built, another advertising medium became popular – the billboard.

With the growth of the automobile, producers recognized that these billboards could be seen from great distances when traveling in a car. 

The 1920’s were considered the golden age of the silent movie. Beautiful movie palaces replaced the movie theater. The posters of old were replaced by artistically aesthetic movie posters. Well-known artists were commissioned to design movie poster portraits of leading stars. 

The posters of the 1920’s were specifically designed with portraits of the stars, the movie title, and the star’s name. There was an occasional slogan or two, but most of the emphasis was centered on the movie stars.

With the 1930’s came the Great Depression. Many feared that movies would suffer during this time because people would not want to spend their money to go to the movies but the exact opposite happened. The Depression made people want to escape reality, and movies became even more popular.

During the 1940’s, war movies dominated the screen. 

In the late 1940’s, we entered a new arena: the age of television. By this time, TV had attracted a large number of movie goers, so the studios responded by reducing the number of films made

With the coming of the 1950’s, and to fight the popularity of television, movie studios created more fantasy films. The studios that once produced the war movies were now making science fiction, comedy and grade “B” drive-in movies. Although the drive-in had been around since 1933, it reached its peak during the 1950’s with over 4,000 screens in the United States alone. 

The coming of the 1960’s brought the boomer generation to their teen years. There were so many children from the post-war baby boom that a lot of the movies were very “teen” oriented. Teen idols from the world of rock and roll crossed into movie stardom. Elvis Presley became very popular at this time, not only for his music, but his movies. There were also a lot of “beach movies” with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Action movies also became very popular and we saw the introduction of the infamous double agent, 007, James Bond.

The 1970’s was actually a launching pad to the era of the blockbusters of the 1980’s. Movies like The Godfather, Rocky, Star Wars and Star Trek were born. Although the posters of this time continued the use of photography, drawing and painting styles were sometimes used.


The 1980’s was the age of special effects, which was the key to the success of The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, Back to the Future, Batman, ET, Ghostbusters and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Until the 1980’s, most movie theaters featured only one movie in their theater at a time. All their advertising space was centered on that one movie. With the 1980’s came theaters which featured several movies, and therefore, the lobby advertising had to be divided equally for all the films. As a result, “mini sheet” posters became popular because they could be produced in smaller sizes.

With the 1990’s came the computerization of special effects. Because of this, the 90’s brought two of the biggest money making films in history, Jurassic Park and Batman Forever.