Background
The son of a trapeze artist, Chantrell was the youngest of nine children.
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Tom Chantrell
Edit ProfileCareer
He left Manchester Art College and went into advertising, eventually starting in 1933 at Allardyce Palmer who had accounts with Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. In 1938 he designed his first film poster The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse. He continued with posters until World World War II service with the Royal Engineers bomb disposal units.
After demobilisation he returned to Allardyce Palmer eventually doing over 7,000 film posters.
Chantrell did not see the films he drew foreign He would receive a plot line and a handful of stills and use friends and family for poses.
Chantrell"s posters were often produced prior to the film being made in order to raise money from investors. Chantrell designed many posters for Hammer Films and the Carry On films.
The latter brought him some trouble when the poster for Carry On Spying had to be changed to avoid looking too much like the Renato Fratini poster for From Russia with Love whilst the Carry On Cleo poster was pulled and redesigned after a lawsuit from 20th Century Fox that the send up looked too much like the original Howard Terpning Cleopatra artwork.
In the 1960s Chantrell was often drawing artwork for 5 different films or double bills at one time. With the move away from illustrated artwork for motion pictures, Chantrell designed covers for videos. Among films he designed the artwork for were The King and I, Von Ryan"s Express, One Million Years British Columbia, The Anniversary and Star Wars.
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Born
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Died
July 15, 2001 (aged 84) -
Nationality
British