* Morlock Kimberly Lindbergs is still unavailable to post her usual tantalizing and entertaining articles, so I am filling in for her once more.
For several months, I have been researching posters for classic movies for a personal project. I enjoyed the experience more than anticipated because I have learned a great deal. Classic-film posters were rendered like illustrations, making them more artistic and colorful than contemporary posters dependent on photographic elements. Another entertaining ingredient is the tag line—that one-line description used to suggest something about the movie that will lure viewers into the theaters. Written by studio press agents, producers, or unsung employees in the publicity office, the tag lines are frequently melodramatic, sometimes funny, and occasionally vexing. I thought I would share a few that I found interesting. Be prepared for excessive exclamation points!
Some of the tag lines stand out because they are lurid or ludicrous, or perhaps luridly ludicrous: There are two bits of text on the poster for the Brian Keith-Ginger Rogers’s crime thriller Tight Spot (1955). Most fun is the printed dialogue at the top of the poster:
She: “Is that blood?” He: “I took two bullets through the chest, ma’am. Just routine.”
At first, I didn’t know whether to laugh or be impressed. I guess I was supposed to laugh, because a text box at the bottom of the poster reads, “The word is out! The tightest, tautest most terrific suspense entertainment in years is the year’s big comedy, too!”
My favorite tag line so far is from the poster for the 1931 version of Trader Horn (top): “White goddess of the pagan tribes, the cruelest woman in all Africa!” However, the tag lines from Born to Be Bad (1950), starring poor Joan Fontaine, are a close second: “Baby faced savage in a jungle of intrigue!” In some parts of the country, the poster was even trashier: “Man Bait! Trouble never came in a more desirable package. The rare and racy adventures of a savage in a jungle of intrigue!”
For actors with lengthy careers, I found a loose consistency to the tag lines that vaguely reflected their star images. As a film historian, I found this most interesting, though the lines themselves are not always exciting. Joan Crawford’s star image as the sexually direct working-class woman hardened by her life experiences is echoed in the following posters. On the poster for Autumn Leaves (1956): “He was so young . . . so eager . . . and I was so lonely—”. Twenty years earlier, the comedy No More Ladies also emphasized her brazenness with men: “When they meet—high comedy! When they kiss—flaming romance! When they marry—Sh! Sh!” Crawford’s star image is summed up entirely on the poster for This Woman Is Dangerous (1952) in which she plays Beth Austin:
“Part of her was Ritz—
Part of her was ‘racket’—
All of her was exciting!
Beth Austin—stylish dame
With a stylish name—
Who lived by jungle law
In a big city and clawed
Her way to where the
Money was . . . !
Crawford’s rival, Bette Davis also played strong-minded women, but her star image was less about the pain caused by the ultimate passion and more about the pain caused by the ultimate love. The poster for Old Acquaintance (1943) quotes the character: “I know what every woman expects from love . . . and what she accepts if she is wise!” The Letter (1940) also quotes her character: “With all my heart I still love the man I killed . . . .” Quoting her character as a tag line is a recurring motif in publicity for Davis’s films. For The Great Lie (1941): “There are some things a woman has to lie about. . . to a man!” This doesn’t mean her characters actually said these lines; that would not matter to publicity departments.
As I was looking through so many posters, I began to wonder if there were consistencies in tag lines according to genre. The only genre that came close was film noir. The consistent elements to many of the taglines were violence and women. Of course, the references to women were the best. On the poster for Woman in the Window (1944): “It was the look in her eyes that made him think of murder.” For The Blue Gardenia (1953): “There was nothing lily-white about her—the clinch-and-kill girl they would call Blue Gardenia.” Brute Force (1947): “Men caged . . . driven by the thought of their women on the loose!” Pitfall (1948): “A man can be strong as steel . . . but somewhere there’s a woman who’ll break him!” I am not sure if The Long Wait is a film noir, because I had never heard of it, but it is based on a Mickey Spillane story, so I assume it’s close. Besides, I could not pass up this tag line: “Three thrill-hungry dames played me for a sucker—now it’s my turn!”
Tag lines that rhyme are never a good idea. This doggerel can be found on the poster for Crossroads: “Where women wait to seal your fate!” For my money, the Tracy-Hepburn comedy Pat and Mike deserves better than this tag line: “Together again—and it’s no fib, Their funniest hit since Adam’s Rib.” And, for Sullivan’s Travels: “Veronica Lake’s on the take.”
My favorite poster taglines are those that don’t quite make sense. Sometimes, it’s the fault of ill-placed punctuation. The poster for 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) suffers from a chaotic mess of semi-colons, exclamation points, and poorly used upper and lower case letters: “MEN without WOMEN; MEN without HOPE! smash their lives to pieces against steel chains!” Sometimes, the copywriter attempted to make a clever reference to the storyline only to end up with something misleading. Under the title on the poster for The Women (1939), the tag line reads “It’s all about men.” Anyone who has seen the film understands what the line means, but if you have not seen it, you might think it is about men chasing after women. The poster for the b-movie Canon City (1948) is trying convey that the film is based on a true story, while still titillating audiences. Instead, the tagline merely mixes its metaphor: “Filmed with the naked fury of fact!”
The poster for Cornered (1945) is trying to tout RKO, though I am not sure for what: It reads, “It’s always RKO for money-melodrama,” though I am not sure what a money-melodrama is. More recent movies are not exempt from poorly constructed tag lines. I always thought the line for Downhill Racer (1969) reached too far for existential meaning: “How fast must a man go to get from where he’s at?” Be careful, or you will trip over the prepositions there.
Low-budget sci fi and adventure tales are fun for whimsically mixing historical eras, or for resurrecting them in another galaxy, as with Riders to the Stars (1954): “Hurtle toward the far reaches of the universe with the space Vikings of the future!” hope they wear Viking helmets in space.
Let’s Make It Legal (1951) is one of Marilyn Monroe’s early movies in which she costars in an ensemble cast. The tag line is combined with the poster’s primary visual image, which is the five principal characters riding in a convertible. The first part of the tag line reads “Who cares if it’s legal as long as it’s . . .” The line is followed by a string of adjectives placed purposefully above the heads of the actors. Above Barbara Bates’s head is “tempting,” above MacDonald Carey is “virile,” above Claudette Colbert is “tantalizing,” above Zachary Scott is “smooth,” and above Marilyn is simply “wow!” I understand that the words are supposed to describe each movie star’s image, though I might argue with “virile” for Carey. However, if you don’t recognize the figures in the car, and you simple read the tag line for the text, it makes little sense, or it is vaguely pornographic: “Who cares if it’s legal as long as it’s tempting, virile, tantalizing, smooth, wow!” Well, perhaps I am over-thinking it.
Not everyone can come up with “In space no one can hear you scream,” “Garbo talks,” “Who you gonna call?”, or even “Sister, sister, oh so fair, why is there blood all over your hair?” (from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane). I guess that is the lesson here: Either you read the tagline, get the gist, and see the movie, or you forget it the instant you read it.