Lobby Art

Starting about 1916 or so, Jewett Bubar began turning out large (approximately 2' x 3') "lobby posters" for the latest Hollywood films premiering in San Francisco. His outpouring was as speedy as it was prolific. He is reported to have done as many as 6 to 8 of these large rendering each week. Those shown here are currently in the possession of his grandson, but other may still exist.

Bubar began working for Paramount Pictures as a commercial artist sometime during World War I. It was from his ground floor studio behind the California Theatre at 4th and Market Streets in San Francisco, that he began to turn out a remarkable body of commercial artwork unique to the era.

One of his earliest efforts is a dramatic orange and blue poster of the early silent Western star, William S. Hart. Hart's career in Hollywood Westerns began in 1914 (His Hour of Manhood, The Bargain). His rugged looks and masculine authority - so apparent on the screen - are captured in Bubar's poster-paint representation.

Done in characteristically rapid fashion, Bubar would appear to effortlessly produce 4 to 6 posters a week. His daughter indicates that most of his posters and paintings were done freehand from the numerous movie stills provided the artist from company press kits. It is unclear when or what movie the Hart pose was taken from, but It was probably painted before Hart's last silent Western (Tumbleweeds) in 1925.

A later work that has also survived is that of a young Katherine Hepburn, from the 1933 movie Morning Glory, for which she earned her first Academy Award Hepburn had actually debuted a year before - 1932 - in A Bill of Divorcement, opposite John Barrymore.

Bubar's daughter recalls that this poster was the product of Hepburn's skyrocketing popularity at this time (two other Hepburn films from 1933 were Christopher Strong and Little Women). This Morning Glory rendering was done completely in red chalk, and is notable for its energy, shading, and remarkable highlighting effects resulting from absence of chalkwork!

In all his years as a commercial artist, Bubar had a respect for celebrities that could project both power and glamor - and he seemed to have an affinity for capturing those qualities on canvas or poster board.

Not all Bubar's posters were of known actors or stars, however. We see here another poster-paint work of one of the characters from a movie entitled Moana of the South Seas (also known simply as Moana). Bubar's daughter maintains that the head is merely an atmospheric representation of any one of numerous possible characters in the film, but it is possible that it represents the central character, a young Polynesian named Moana.

Moana was produced by influential filmmaker Robert Flaherty, shortly after the success of his famous Nanook of the North (1922) which purported to chronicle the real-life daily life of the Eskimos. The "documentary" (since called into question for factual and ethical lapses by present-day standards), set the mold for documentaries in the decades that followed.

Like Nanook, Moana was filmed on location (in this case, the island of Savai'i in Samoa), and bears Flaherty's distinctive poetic treatment of a realistic ethnographically-based subject. The film took 2 years of location shooting, but never received the acclaim that its predecessor had, though it, too, was arguably as influential on future documentarians.

Another Bubar lobby poster that was known to still be extant as recently as 1970, was that of silent screen actress Laura LaPlante. This was another highly dramatic and stylized pose done in various shades of greens and yellows, that probably dated from the late 'teens or early 1920's.

The image on this page is taken from a random snapshot that had someone standing in front of the poster, his head just below LaPlante's right hand, center. The image of the intruding head was "removed" from the picture of the poster, and vague suggestions of the star's clothing were substituted in Adobe Photoshop. Until the original artwork is again located, this is all we have to document the work.

Movie-Based Oil Paintings

Much of Bubar's early movie subjects were done on poster board using the medium of poster paint. But towards the end of the 1920's, he began to experiment in chalk (see Hepburn poster, above), and oil paints.

Whereas his large lobby posters were rendered for public display and were approximately 2' x 3' in size, the artist also created several smaller oil paintings of movie stars and characters for his own pleasure. One of the earliest extant of these film paintings is of Anna May Wong - Hollywood's earliest Asian female star. This oil dates to the late 1920's.

Ronald Colman was the subject of yet another personal "movie" oil done by Bubar. Since Colman's career as swashbuckling leading man roughly spanned the years between 1923 (The White Sister) and the start of World War II (Lost Horizon and The Prisoner of Zenda, both 1937), it is speculated that this portrait dates from the early 1930's.

Probably taken from a movie still of unknown origin, a Native-American Indian is the subject of this pose. Research is still being done to determine the film from which this may have been taken.

Similarly, this oil of an Asian Indian Sikh has the drama one might expect from a movie still - again, of unknown origin. In this case, however, the number of films dealing with South Asian subjects - notably the British Raj in India - are fewer in number than American Westerns during the period. Hopefully this shot can be traced to Four Feathers (1939), Gunga Din (1939), or some other production in the 1920's or 30's.