More than 800 images, many reproduced as full-page illustrations--the most comprehensive book of Western movie poster art, both for classics and for the "B"-movies, ever published, offering the definitive history of a genre often underestimated for its impact on American audiences. The book begins with a fact-heavy introduction that details how Western movies became popular as a result of America's ongoing fascination with the Wild West, as portrayed in dime novels and pulp-fiction magazines. We explain how and when the genre archetypes--white hat vs. black hat, the cowboy's love for his horse, the Western hero as roving do-gooder--were fixed. And we specifically define what "A" and "B" movies were (with "A"s including such movies as Stagecoach, Destry Rides Again, and True Grit, and "B"s such as Gold Mine in the Sky, Saga of Death Valley, and Hopalong Cassidy, and the likes of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers) and which Westerns fit into those categories. Posters are grouped by theme within each chapter--for example, in Chapter 1, a section on early Western posters compares a simple one-color newspaper ad. used to promote Edison's The Great Train Robbery, with an elaborate color poster for Scott Marble's 1896 play of the same name. Each chapter devotes a special feature to a specific "Western" star, writer, director, stuntman, or leading lady.

Text in the later features in the book includes excerpts from first-hand interviews conducted by editor Ed Hulse from as far back as the mid-1970s. The features are illustrated with posters and the occasional behind-the-scenes photo taken during a film's production. Although it's widely believed that most Westerns were alike, and that "if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all," Hulse disputes those notions in his chapter texts with seldom-reported historical facts and perceptive analysis based on a half-century's research. Posters are shown large enough to showcase them properly--no postagestamp- sized images here The Art of the Classic Western Movie Poster culls the best examples of poster art created for several hundred classic (and some not-so classic) Westerns produced over seventy-five years, from 1903 to 1978. Curated and edited by Ed Hulse, a veteran Western-movie scholar whose previous books include Filming the West of Zane Grey, The Wild West of Fiction and Film, and Behind the Mask: The Story of Republic's Lone Ranger Serials. He also co-edited the groundbreaking Don Miller's Hollywood Corral: A Comprehensive B-Western Roundup, and edited the magazine Western Movie Roundup. Hulse has also acted as editor of the The Art of Pulp Fiction and co-edited the definitive The Art of the Pulps.