Elvis
1979
Designer
Milton Glaser
DIMENSIONS
36 1/4 x 24 in. (92.1 x 61 cm)
OBJECT NUMBER
PH.2025.1505
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
United States
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Mirko Ilić
KEYWORDS
Books, Entertainment, Literary, Man, Music, Portrait, White

This was the second biography of Elvis Presley for which Glaser produced a promotional poster. The first had been in 1972 for Jerry Hopkins book; designed while the singer was still alive; it suggested a cool if slightly past-his-prime Elvis. Here, however, Glaser memorializes the singer, who had died in 1977, in his youthful glory, in a composition based on a simple color sketch. Glaser noted on his own Facebook page on June 5, 2019, that “I designed several trade book covers early in my career. This poster is an enlargement of the dust jacket of Albert Goldman’s controversial biography of Elvis Presley. I drew Elvis at his most innocent, modeling his face after Greco-Roman sculpture to indicate the ideal of male beauty.”

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