THE WILD GEESE (1978) ORIGINAL ARTWORK AND POSTER, BRITISH

This war film was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and stars Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger. The film was named after the Wild Goose flag and shoulder patch used by Michael 'Mad Mike' Hoare's 5 Commando ANC, the idea of which had been sparked by the Flight of the Wild Geese - a 17th century Irish mercenary army. Hoare was a technical adviser on the film.

Provenance: John Grundy, former Managing Director of Downton’s Advertising. Eric Pulford, a known illustrator, was encouraged by Rank Organisation, who owned more than five hundred cinemas, to set up his own design studio, which became Downton's. Eric Pulford hired a number of talented young college leavers, including Bryan Bysouth and Vic Fair. Pulford also persuaded a number of established Italian artists from Studio Favalli in Rome to come to London to join his team, which included Renato Fratini and Arnaldo Putzu. The process of designing a British poster would often start from the film script or rough cut of the film. A team of visualizers and copywriters produced a range of ideas which Pulford would review before presenting to his clients. When the rough design was approved by the clients, the artwork would need to be finalised. At the time no one anticipated that there would be an interest in the artworks and they were discarded.  A number of artworks were saved by John Grundy from being thrown on a skip, and had remained at his home until recently. Normally poster artwork was smaller than the final poster. However, Putzu liked to work on a large scale and this finished artwork is actually larger than the poster.