| May The Force Be With You Unlicensed Poster | |
| Tons of bootleg Star Wars items were produced, of course. But for some strange reason I'm not aware of many bootleg posters. This may be due to the fact that posters were one of the few licensed items that were available to the public almost immediately after the movie hit in 1977. Paper items are easy to produce, and Factors cranked out a number of attractive posters during their association with the Star Wars license.
This 19" x 27" poster features an interpretation of the most iconic of all Star Wars images--the Frazettaesque vignette of Luke and Leia devised by poster artist Tom Jung for the Style A Star Wars one-sheet. It's an image commonly attributed to the Hildebrandt brothers, who produced an awesome variation on it for a mass market poster produced by Factors. A lot of kids had that Hildebrandt poster tacked to their bedroom wall during the late '70s. If they were old enough, the poster might be tacked beside another popular Factors poster of the time, the one of Farrah Fawcett in her nipple-enhancing red bikini.
Here's a close-up. Luke and Leia have rather awkward expressions on their faces, but the Vader helmet in the background is pretty sensitively rendered. It should be noted that the artist, who has signed the poster as "Nelson," switched the Jung image up a bit. Most notably, Vader's head faces in the opposite direction and Leia stands in back of Luke rather than in front of him. The official version is much more striking, but then Jung is a famous artist whereas Nelson is...well, he just might be that kid from The Simpsons for all I know. The bottom of the poster indicates it was produced by Alric Enterprises of Chatsworth, California, in 1977. |
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| Description by: | Ron Salvatore |
| Photo: | Ron Salvatore |
| From the collection of: | Ron Salvatore |
| Country: | United States |
| Film: | A New Hope |
| Licensee: | Alric Enterprises |
| Year: | 1977 |
| Size: | 19x27in. |
| Category: | Posters / Retail |
