Tony Seiniger, Poster Designer and “Godfather of Movie Advertising,” Dies at 87
Tony Seiniger, the poster designer who also oversaw marketing campaigns for such classic movies as Jaws, Poltergeist, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Total Recall, died Monday in Atlanta, his family announced. He was 87.
Known as the “Godfather of Movie Advertising,” Seiniger took unknown illustrator Drew Struzan under his wing and gave him his start as a poster designer in Hollywood. Struzan would become a show business legend.
The New Yorker was involved with more than 2,500 major motion picture campaigns during his career, and in 1998, he became only the seventh person to receive the lifetime achievement award from THR’s Key Art Awards.
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After launching Seiniger Advertising in Los Angeles in 1970, Seiniger designed the poster for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and that led to the job that brought his company lots of attention — the iconic poster for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). It employed Roger Kastel’s painting of a shark and a swimmer that also was the cover of Peter Benchley’s paperback Jaws novel.
As the creative director of Seiniger Advertising over the next three decades, he worked on campaigns for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Poltergeist (1982), Risky Business (1983) — Struzan designed the poster for that — Teachers (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Moonstruck (1987), Bull Durham (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), The Last Emperor (1987), The Firm (1988), Total Recall (1990), Hook (1991) and many, many others.
Asked what make a poster great by NPR in 2003, he replied: “First off, it should be different. It should be something nobody has seen before — that’ll get it attention. You have to be able to read it at about 35 or 40 miles per hour and digest it in three seconds … That’s the challenge, to try get an hour-and-a-half or two hours of entertainment down into a simple graphic that you can read in three seconds.”
One of three kids, Seiniger was born in 1939 to Charles and Pretoria “Torre” Seiniger and raised in Manhattan. He attended boarding school in Kent, Connecticut, followed by two years at Kenyon College in Ohio and 3 1/2 years at the Rhode Island School of Design.
He got his start in the ad world at EUE/Screen Gems in New York, where he produced and directed a series of TV spots for The Professionals (1966), a Western from parent company Columbia Pictures. The campaign launched his career in movie marketing, and he created posters for such films as Shaft (1971) and Mean Streets (1973).
He designed the poster for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and that led to the job that brought his company fame — the poster for Jaws (1975).
Seiniger will be “remembered by those who knew him for his enormous personality and memorable laugh, his grand love of food and wine, his all-encompassing knowledge of Broadway musicals and the true devotion he brought to all of his many friendships,” his family noted. He also participated in amateur Formula 1 races in his spare time.
Survivors include his daughters, Jillian, Heather, Sara and Tamar; his grandchildren, Dylan, Rose, Alex, Georgia and Josephine; and his longtime partner, Wriston.
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