Frank Frazetta – The Gauntlet Movie Poster Preliminary Painting, 1977

Year: 1977

Film: The Gauntlet

Studio: Warner Bros.

Director: Clint Eastwood

Artist: Frank Frazetta

Medium: Pencil and gouache on artist's leaf

Size: 12 × 15.75 inches (30.5 × 40 cm)

Signed: “Frazetta,” lower right

An important original preliminary painting by Frank Frazetta, created as one of a small group of compositions personally presented to Clint Eastwood during development of the celebrated theatrical poster for The Gauntlet (Warner Bros., 1977).

The commission has an unusual history. Eastwood personally selected Frazetta to create the film's poster artwork and visited the artist with co-star Sondra Locke, with both posing for Frazetta as he developed the campaign. Eastwood was already an admirer of Frazetta's work and specifically singled out the artist's celebrated painting Dark Kingdom as representing the visual impact he wanted for The Gauntlet. Frazetta recalled Eastwood making clear that he did not want the composition copied, but wanted Frazetta's distinctive look and style.

Frazetta subsequently produced a small group of preliminary paintings exploring different approaches to the commission. This is one of those original concepts submitted directly to Eastwood for consideration. It depicts Eastwood's Ben Shockley and Sondra Locke's Gus Mally against the armored bus central to the film's climactic sequence. Precisely like the eventual poster, the composition places Eastwood in the monumental standing pose ultimately selected for the finished painting.

Frazetta later described experimenting with several less conventional Eastwood compositions before also producing a more traditional heroic standing treatment. It was the latter direction that Eastwood and Warner Bros. selected, developing into the now-iconic finished poster of Eastwood standing with gun in hand and Locke beside him amid the wreckage.

The finished Gauntlet painting became one of Frazetta's most recognizable pieces of movie advertising art and was reproduced extensively for the film's theatrical campaign. Eastwood's involvement went beyond commissioning the image: contemporary accounts record that Eastwood subsequently purchased Frazetta's finished original painting from the artist, separately from the fee paid for reproduction rights.

This preliminary therefore represents a particularly direct part of the creative process behind one of the great illustrated movie posters of the 1970s: an original Frazetta preliminary created for, presented to and agreed by Clint Eastwood himself before the final poster was painted.

Artist: Frank Frazetta

Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) is regarded as one of the most influential fantasy and illustration artists of the twentieth century. His paintings for Conan the Barbarian, Death Dealer, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Creepy, Eerie and numerous book and magazine covers fundamentally reshaped the visual language of modern fantasy.

His influence extended far beyond publishing into comics, film, gaming and popular culture. Frazetta also created memorable movie advertising artwork but The Gauntlet remains one of his most celebrated film commissions, bringing together Frazetta and Clint Eastwood at the height of their respective careers.