Father Geek signing in. As most of you long time readers are aware Harry and I made our living for years trading in pop culture collectibles. I started dealing/collecting while still in film school, before that actually, and accelerated the process of collecting during our high-rolling, if brief, rock lighting career. When Harry came on the scene in 1971 we shifted gears to full time comics-sci-fi-film-memorbilia-rock-n-toy buying/selling/trading. Over the years I fell in love with pop culture art styles, everything from 1930's pulp covers and Dimestore Murder Mystery Dustjackets to 50's Metal Lunch Boxes, but the old, vintage movie paper art in particular. I love the smell of old movie poster paper, it got in my blood sure as dope in a junkie's. I soon noticed that the artists of these fine popular works lived closeted lives, chained to their drawing boards, unknown to the general public and even most of their diehard fans. Reynold Brown was an exception. Some how we became aware that he was the one who painted most of those great 1950’s Science Fiction posters like DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THEM, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, TARANTULA, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, and many others. Well brother poster geeks one of the truely great, classic 1930’s motion picture poster artists has just died. Unless you are a most advanced poster collector I am sure that you have never heard his name, or even seen it in print anywhere, but he was tops in the field in his day and is probably responsible for selling as many theatre tickets as most so-called stars. The world was unaware of him as an artist when he lived, maybe now that he’s gone his fame will spread.
Enrico Mangravite, “Henry” to those who knew him, was the remarkable movie poster artist whose accomplishments included the original WIZARD OF OZ promotional poster, and he has recently died of natural causes at his home in Southern California. He was 81 years old.
In the middle of the 1930s, the Italian-bred, but Brooklyn-raised pencil and paintbrush virtuoso worked in the front art offices of RKO studios, Warner Brothers, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. While there he executed the designs for the posters for various well loved movies of that time period that have since become very expensive collector items: His Marx Brother’s ANIMAL CRACKERS 1-Sheet from 1930 is now worth in excess of $7,500, Carol Lombard’s 1934 BOLERO is currently bringing more than $10,000, THE THIN MAN from 1934 fetches at least $12,000, Clark Gable’s version of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY produced in 1935 now has a minimum value of around $8.000, his 1935 TOP HAT for Rogers and Astaire brings 5 figures on the present day market, the great Garbo’s 1939 NINOTCHKA would currently pull down several thousand dollars at a major auction, and of course the previously mentioned “Wizard of Oz.” from 1939 could easily be expected to top out around $35,000 at a well promoted sale, and this is to name but a few of Henry’s 200+ motion picture posters.
It’s really a shame, Mangravite was probably paid far less than $100 for each of these great iconic designs he created and he was not allowed to sign his work on the poster, or even keep his original art. Bummer! Times have really changed. Now days a popular, constantly working artist like Henry can with the aid of a good agent become a millionaire several times over. Just check out the salaries of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spawn comic creators to see what I mean. During the 80’s artist’s names suddenly began to appear on movie posters so we became aware of the likes of Amsel, Giger and the Hildebrandt brothers. Now any artist with a decent agent gets to keep his valuable original art. Most of Henry’s was just thrown away, or incinerated by the studios he produced it for.
A highly proficient and imaginative painter in his early teens, Mangravite attended Cooper Union school and enrolled at the Art Student League of Brooklyn, where his primary courses of endeavor were art production and design. Henry spent several years working with the L.A. Times Newspaper in their advertising department. He was later hired by Walt Disney to aid in the design and development of his new “Disneyland” theme park. Over the occupancy of this illustrative career, Mangravite also worked for Loews’ Theatres PR department mapping out entire publicity campaigns for movies to be placed in newspapers and magazines and freelanced poster work for Paramount Studios. Father Geek loves this creative genius’ work and is looking forward to the day when his name will be attached to each and every beautiful poster he has blessed us with. ENRICO MANGRAVITE as important a part to the success of 1930’s and 40’s motion pictures as almost anybody. Don’t forget that name!
