Millar made shows, stars shine at Prestige Theater

Green Valley News

It was 1949, and American audiences were heading to movie theaters to see John Wayne in “Sands of Iwo Jima,” Jane Wyman and David Niven in “Kiss in the Dark” and Maureen O’Hara and Vincent Price in “Bagdad.”

The latter — billed as an “exciting adventure” in the “city of 1001 thrills,” filmed in “breathtaking Technicolor” — was a favorite of Bob Millar’s. Not for the story line, necessarily, but for the huge, distinctive “theater fronts” he was able to create.

Millar, a Green Valley landscape painter since 1983, began his career in commercial art as art director for Warner Bros. at its Midwestern zone in Milwaukee.

On the ground floor of the Warner Building in downtown Brew City was the Prestige Theater, where first-run movies were shown and orchestras played.

Millar recalls meeting such Big Band legends as Stan Keaton, Benny Goodman and the Dorsey brothers.

“I loved music,” Millar says, noting that his father had had an orchestra.

Working at Warner Bros.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Millar was 24 and attending the Layton School of Fine Art when a friend of his was retiring and offered him the Warner Bros. job.

Millar had helped his friend make 3-D promotional items for Milwaukee-based Schlitz Brewing Co., and he was thrilled to get a full-time job with Warner Bros.

“I was the artist that did all the advertising — the physical ads in the theater and print ads for the newspaper,” he said.

Warner Bros. also had 17 other theaters around Milwaukee and its suburbs, “and we could fill the neighborhood theaters if I did a good job,” he recalls.

The 3-D theater fronts, with letters six inches deep spelling out the movie’s name and those of its Hollywood stars “were all cut out of cardboard by me,” Millar says.

Behind the huge letters would be colored tissue paper transparencies inside a light box, which would illuminate the theater front that was 12 feet long and 4 feet high.

Promoting new films

Millar also would create balcony hangers measuring 25 feet by 25 feet to promote a half-dozen or more upcoming movies.

“It was just me doing the art. The ushers would put the things up,” he explains, noting that he did send the movie studio photos off for enlargement.

For a film like “The Girl from Jones Beach,” starring Ronald Reagan, Millar would have just one week to create the theater front and newspaper ads.

How long a show ran depended on how well it did. The popular 1951 release “Captain Horatio Hornblower,” featuring Gregory Peck, ran for seven weeks.

In addition, John Wayne films really drew the audiences.

“We didn’t have to do anything special, just big and bold” theater fronts, Millar says. Army personnel also were brought to the theater for the Wayne movies, he says.

Millar, 84, says he had fun the eight years he spent with Warner Bros., before he joined Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich.

There he creating recreational art and factory safety posters for the national auto maker.

Ford & World’s Fair

He was with Ford for 18 years, working for Leo Beebe, “a funny guy and personal friend of Henry Ford II,” Millar says.

At Ford, he created a successful traveling exhibit for the company that featured three canvas dome buildings that showcased the company’s history and cars, as well as its tractors, thrashers, booklets and brochures.

Millar also was Ford’s art director for the 1964 World’s Fair and got to know Walt Disney when Ford and Disney worked together.

He went on to work for Unimark International from 1967 to 1972, including two years in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He has been married to his wife, Anita, nearly 40 years.

After moving to Green Valley almost 26 years ago, Millar turned his attention to fine art, painting numerous outdoor watercolor and acrylic scenes of Southern Arizona, plus teaching art classes and operating an art supply shop, dubbed Palette & Brush, on Duval Road from October 1985 to May 2007.

“I’ve had a marvelous career.”

kwalenga@gvnews.com | 547-9739