Chick flick movie posters - the back-to-back pose

Cafe Society
1

You know, the two stars leaning against each other’s backs, amused looks on faces. Like Pretty Woman, rom-coms featuring Matthew McConaughey, that kind of thing. It’s a cliché now, but I’m wondering who started it…

2

“Now stay tuned for an all-new episode of Crossarmed Opposites!”

-most recent episode of Family Guy

3

This one’s from 1938 and they’re back-to-back (sorta).

But the first one I can find that’s most like the OP is this, from 1949.

4

Funny, I looked up Adam’s Rib during the extensive research I conducted prior to posting the OP, but Wikipedia has a different poster. But yes, that is a good example.

5

I think a lot of them are just, well, copying Pretty Woman. Movie posters… sometimes it’s shocking how much money and time is put into a film only to have posters produced by, it seems, a teenager taking Photoshop 101.

6

That one’s a student project, not a studio poster.

7

Whup! You’re right. Here’s an original use of the photo (for sheet music from the movie). Given that they typically did illustrations and not photographs for one-sheets back then, they may have used this photo as a template for an illustration on a poster, but I can’t say they did with certainty.

8

Here’s another film, from 1955. They’re not back to back, but their backs are, er, facing each other, with them looking at each other over each of their own shoulders.

9

This looks pretty early; don’t know the exact date, but almost certainly before 1938:

Well, there are only so many ways to show two stars in a vertically-oriented rectangular poster, after all:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Where_the_Heart_Is_film.jpg

And not just chick flicks, either:

http://www.akirashiro.com/craigslist/red%20heat.jpg
http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/25/A70-12829

10

Except for the Laurel and Hardy and the Two Weeks Notice (which is a chick flick) I don’t think the rest fit the OP. Which is two people literally back to back touching and not superimposed.

I think the whole idea behind using it in chick flicks is that it fits the standard formula of “man and woman are at odds the whole movie but eventually fall in love at the end”.

11

I blame A View To A Kill.

12

Ahem.

13

Curse you. *Curse you!!! :mad:
*
:: shakes fist ::

14

Blegh! What the hell was EVER Grace Jones’ appeal???