'Funny Face', 1957
British Quad Film Poster
30 x 40 in. (76 x 101 cm.)
Backed on linen.
Printed by Charles & Read Ltd., London and Harlow.
Further images
With the quippy tagline 'Audrey's Hep!' (jazz slang for a real cool cat), an effervescent Audrey Hepburn takes centre stage on this exceedingly rare British Quad poster for the original...
With the quippy tagline 'Audrey's Hep!' (jazz slang for a real cool cat), an effervescent Audrey Hepburn takes centre stage on this exceedingly rare British Quad poster for the original release of much loved 1957 musical 'Funny Face.' Loosely based on photographer Richard Avedon's early career, the film saw Hepburn play a studious Greenwich Village bookseller, whisked off to Paris by fashion photographer Fred Astaire and transformed into a high fashion model. In a frothy finale, the pair dance in the grounds of a Chantilly chapel before drifting away on a raft to the strains of Gershwin's 'S'wonderful.' Together with an ethereal profile portrait of the gamine star, sketched Parisian scenes of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, and a tip-tapping Astaire, the poster art pictured Audrey performing the film's 'Basal Metabolism' dance routine - an interpretive avant-garde number performed solo by Hepburn in a smoky beatnik jazz cafe in head to toe black, save for white socks to highlight her dancing feet against the vibrant lipstick-red ground.