The Fantastic Plastic Machine

Harold Adler (letterer)
Eric and Lowell Blum (directors, writers)
Jay North (narrator)

Beverly Hills, CA: Crown International Pictures, 1969. Original title card maquette hand lettered by Harold Adler for the 1969 film.

Harold Adler was a calligrapher who created hand lettered titles on over 100 films, worked frequently with Alfred Hitchcock, and was a favorite of legendary title sequence designers Saul Bass and Pablo Ferro. In addition to "The Fantastic Plastic Machine" his credits include "Comanche!" (1956), "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955), "The Seven Year Itch" (1955), "Carmen Jones" (1954), "Psycho" (1960), "The Birds" (1963), "In the Heat of the Night" (1967), and "Finian's Rainbow" (1969). In 2012, an exhibition of Adler's work was organized by noted typographer and design historian Jill Bell at the American Advertising Federation, Kansas City.

A key early documentary on surfing, shot in California, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, and its intersection with the Summer of Love, and the youth culture surrounding it near the end of the 1960s. The Blum brothers' only film credit, narrated by Jay North ("Dennis the Menace").

22 x 13.75 inches. Black ink on white card stock, with tissue paper overlay. Near Fine, with light toning to the card edges, tissue paper chipped at the edges. Manuscript annotations, including Adler's signature, to the tissue overlay and card.


[Book #132784]