High Plains Drifter 50th Anniversary - Rare Advertising from Universal
To conclude our mini celebration of High Plains Drifter’s 50th anniversary, I though I’d post these two rare pieces of advertising from Universal studios. The first is new here to the Archive, a rare ad from Box office magazine (July 1973 issue) which proclaimed Clint as the Number 1 box office star of 1972, and his Number 1 Western for 1973.
The second is another highly unusual advertisement from the studio’s, ‘This is Universal’s Year – All Year!’ campaign. Except this advertisement turned out to be a little different, as the art department at Universal decided to add a pair of legs to Clint! A very odd decision, and one that I can’t really offer any logical explanation – except that it did look very out-of-place? It’s interesting too that Universal (who Clint was working for during this period) decided to add Dirty Harry to the ad, a film that Clint had made over at Warner Brothers – instead of his previous film (another Western) (for Universal) in the way of Joe Kidd which was released in the July of 1972. It’s a very strange ad altogether really? I first posted this ad back in February 2022, under the post ‘When an Ad campaign has legs…’ but thought it was worthy of a second look alongside the Box office advertisement for the film’s anniversary.
In closing this anniversary post and tying-in with the general advertising theme, I have also added below, two very rare Bill Gold designs for High Plains Drifter. These are very early concepts and my thanks go to Davy Triumph for these great images. And finally, to conclude while retaining the overall ‘Drifter’ splendour, a re-post of the wonderful U.S. set of 14” x 11” Lobby cards – a magnificent set.
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