The Bell System logo and trademark as it appeared in 1969

The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T–led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S. Justice Department mandate.

The colloquial term Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell") was often used by the general public in the United States to refer to any aspect of this conglomerate, as it held a near complete monopoly over all telephone service in most areas of the country, and is still used by many to refer to any telephone company. Ma Bell is also used to refer to the various female voices behind recordings for the Bell System: Mary Moore, Jane Barbe, and Pat Fleet (the current voice of AT&T).

History[link]

Logo used from 1889 to 1900

In 1877, the American Bell Telephone Company, named after Alexander Graham Bell, opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. Within a few years local exchange companies were established in every major city in the United States. Use of the Bell System name initially referred to those early telephone franchises and eventually comprised all telephone companies owned by American Telephone & Telegraph, referred to internally as Bell Operating Companies, or "BOCs".

In 1899, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) acquired the assets of its parent, the American Bell Telephone Company. Originally American Bell had created AT&T to provide long distance calls between New York and Chicago and beyond. AT&T became the parent of American Bell, and thus the head of the Bell System, because regulatory and tax rules were leaner in New York than in Boston, where American Bell was headquartered. Later, the Bell System and its moniker "Ma Bell" became a term that referred generally to all AT&T companies of which there were four major divisions:

• AT&T Long Lines, providing long lines to interconnect local exchanges and long distance calling services.
• Western Electric Company, Bell's equipment manufacturing arm,
• Bell Labs, conducting research and development for AT&T.
• Bell operating companies, providing local exchange telephone services.

In 1913, under AT&T ownership, the Bell System became a government sanctioned monopoly following a government anti-trust suit and the Kingsbury Commitment. After 1934, AT&T was regulated by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Proliferation of the telephone allowed the company to become the largest corporation in the world until its dismantling by the United States Department of Justice in 1984, at which time the Bell System ceased to exist.^[1]

Formation under Bell patent[link]

Receiving a U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone on March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, which in 1885 became AT&T^[2][3][4] When Bell's original patent expired 15 years later in 1894, the telephone market opened to competition and 6,000 new telephone carriers started while the Bell Telephone company took a significant financial downturn.^[2][4]

On April 30, 1907, Theodore Newton Vail returned as President of AT&T.^[2][4] Vail believed in the superiority of one phone system and AT&T adopted the slogan "One Policy, One System, Universal Service."^[2][5] This would be the company's philosophy for the next 70 years.^[4]

Under Vail, AT&T began buying up many of the smaller telephone companies including Western Union telegraph.^[2][4] Anxious to avoid action from government antitrust suits, AT&T and the federal government entered into an agreement known as the Kingsbury Commitment.^[2][5]

Kingsbury Commitment[link]

Following a government antitrust suit in 1913, AT&T agreed to the Kingsbury Commitment in which AT&T would sell their $30 million in Western Union stock, allow competitors to interconnect with their system, and not acquire other independent companies without permission from the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).^[2][4][6]

Bell System trademark used by AT&T and affiliated companies from 1921 to 1939

195 Broadway, HQ for most of 20th century

The Bell trademark pictured here was used from 1921 through 1939 by both the AT&T corporation and the regional operating corporations to co-brand themselves under a single Bell System trademark. The regional operating corporation's name was placed where "name of associated company" appears in this template version of the trademark. Bell system telephones and related equipment were made by Western Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. Member telephone companies paid a fixed fraction of their revenues as a license fee to Bell Labs.

Government sanctioned monopolization[link]

In 1934, the government set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Communications Act of 1934.

As a result, by 1940 the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves. This allowed Bell to prohibit their customers from connecting phones not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a type of phone not leased by the local Bell monopoly, he or she had to purchase the phone at cost, give it to the phone company, then pay a 're-wiring' charge and a monthly lease fee in order to use it.

In 1949, the United States Department of Justice alleged in an antitrust lawsuit that AT&T and the Bell System operating companies were using their near-monopoly in telecommunications to attempt to establish unfair advantage in related technologies, especially the fledgling computer industry. The outcome was a 1956 consent decree limiting AT&T to 85% of the United States' national telephone network and certain government contracts, and precluding the Bell System from extending its reach into the fledgling computer industry and from continuing to hold interests in Canada and the Caribbean. The Bell System's Canadian operations included the Bell Canada regional operating company and the Northern Electric manufacturing subsidiary of the Bell System's Western Electric equipment manufacturer. Northern Electric Company and Bell Canada were spun off in 1956, as separate companies outside of the Bell System proper. The Bell System's Caribbean regional operating companies were sold to the ITT Corporation, known at the time as International Telephone & Telegraph Co.

The Bell System also owned various Caribbean regional operating companies, as well as 54% of NEC and a post-World War II reconstruction relationship with NTT before the 1956 boundaries were emplaced. Before 1956, the Bell System's reach was truly gargantuan. Even during the period from 1956 to 1984, the Bell System's dominant reach into all forms of communications was pervasive within the United States and influential in telecommunication standardization throughout the industrialized world.

The 1984, Bell System divestiture brought an end to the affiliation branded as the Bell System. It resulted from another antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1974, alleging illegal practices by the Bell System companies to stifle competition in the telecommunications industry. The suit was settled on 8 January 1982, superseding the former restrictions that AT&T and the DOJ had agreed in 1956.

Present-day usage of the Bell name[link]

The Bell System service marks (i.e., the circled-bell logo (especially as redesigned by noted graphic designer Saul Bass in 1969 and seen at the top of this article) and the words Bell System in text) were used before January 1, 1984, when the AT&T divestiture of its regional operating companies took effect. Currently, the Bell word mark, logo, and other related trademarks, are held concurrently by each of the remaining Bell companies – namely AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and Cincinnati Bell.^[7] International rights to the marks, except for Canada, are held by a joint venture of these companies, Bell IP Holdings.

Of the various resulting 1984 spinoffs, only BellSouth actively used and promoted the Bell name and logo for its entire history, from the 1984 break up to its merger with the new AT&T in 2006. Similarly, cessation of using either the Bell name or logo occurred for many of the other companies more than a decade after the 1984 break up as part of an acquisition-related rebranding. The others have only used the marks on rare occasions to maintain their trademark rights, even less now that they have adopted names conceived long after divestiture. Examples include Verizon, which still uses the Bell logo on its trucks and payphones, and Qwest, formerly US West, which licenses the Northwestern Bell and Mountain Bell names to Unical Enterprises, who makes telephones under the Northwestern Bell name.

Cincinnati Bell, a local franchise of the Bell System that was never wholly owned by AT&T and existed separately prior to 1984, also continues to use the Bell name. It stopped using the Bell logo in the summer of 2006, though it is still seen on some bills, vehicles, and other literature.

In 1984, each regional Bell operating company was assigned a set list of names they were allowed to use in combination with the Bell marks. Again, aside from Cincinnati Bell, none of these Bell System names are currently in use in the United States. For example, Southwestern Bell used both the Bell name and the circled-bell trademark until SBC opted for all of its companies to do business under the "SBC" name in 2002. Bell Atlantic used the Bell name and circled-bell trademark until renaming itself Verizon in 2000.

Of the various resulting 1984 spinoffs, only Bell Canada continues to use the Bell name, although cessation of using either the Bell name and circled-bell trademark occurred for some of these companies multiple decades later. For example, for the multiple decades that Nortel was named Northern Telecom, their research and development arm was Bell Northern Research. Bell Canada and its holding-company parent, Bell Canada Enterprises, still use the Bell name and used variations of the circled-bell logo until 1977, which until 1976 strongly resembled the 1921 to 1939 Bell System trademark shown above.

Subsidiaries[link]

Before the 1984 break-up, the Bell System consisted of the following corporate structure:

• American Telephone and Telegraph Company, a holding company and long-distance carrier
  • Illinois Bell Telephone Company
  • Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Incorporated
  • Michigan Bell Telephone Company
  • New England Telephone and Telegraph Company
  • New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
  • New York Telephone Company
  • Northwestern Bell Telephone Company
  • Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company
  • South Central Bell Telephone Company
  • Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company
  • Southwestern Bell Telephone Company
  • The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia
  • The Diamond State Telephone Company
  • The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company
    • Malheur Home Telephone Company
  • The Ohio Bell Telephone Company
  • The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company
    • Bell Telephone Company of Nevada
  • Wisconsin Telephone Company
• Other subsidiaries:
  • Western Electric Co., Inc. (equipment manufacturing)
    • Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. (R&D, co-owned between AT&T and Western Electric)
  • Cincinnati Bell, Inc. (22.7% owned)
  • The Southern New England Telephone Company (16.8% owned)
  • Bellcomm

Post-breakup[link]

1984[link]

On January 1, 1984, the former components of the Bell System were structured as such:

• American Information Technologies Corporation
  • Illinois Bell Telephone Company
  • Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Incorporated
  • Michigan Bell Telephone Company
  • The Ohio Bell Telephone Company
  • Wisconsin Bell, Inc.
• American Telephone and Telegraph Company
  • AT&T Communications, Inc.
  • AT&T Information Systems, Inc.
  • AT&T Technologies, Inc.
  • Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
• Bell Atlantic Corporation
  • New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
  • The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia
  • The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia
  • The Diamond State Telephone Company
• Bell Communications Research, Inc., owned equally by all the Baby Bells
• BellSouth Corporation
  • Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company
  • South Central Bell Telephone Company
• Cincinnati Bell, Inc.
  • Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company
• NYNEX Corporation
  • New York Telephone Company
  • New England Telephone and Telegraph Company
• Pacific Telesis Group
  • Pacific Bell Telephone Company
    • Nevada Bell Telephone Company
• Southwestern Bell Corporation
  • Southwestern Bell Telephone Company
• The Southern New England Telephone Company
• U S WEST, Inc.
  • Northwestern Bell Telephone Company
  • Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company
  • The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company
    • Malheur Home Telephone Company

Today[link]

After 1984, there were multiple mergers of the operating companies themselves, as well as multiple Baby Bells that came together, and some components are now in the hands of companies independent from the historic Bell System. The current structure of the companies today is as follows.
Regional Bell Operating Companies:

• AT&T Inc., formerly Southwestern Bell Corporation then SBC Communications, Inc., a currently existing holding company
  • AT&T Corp., a current subsidiary
  • AT&T Teleholdings, Inc. (formerly Ameritech Corporation), a current subsidiary, also includes now defunct SNET and Pacific Telesis
    • Illinois Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
    • Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Incorporated, a currently existing regional LEC
    • Michigan Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
    • Pacific Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
      • Nevada Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC, omitted from the MFJ
    • The Ohio Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
    • The Southern New England Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC that AT&T owned 16.8% of before 1984 and thus was left separate by the 1984 break-up
    • Wisconsin Bell, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • BellSouth Corporation, a current subsidiary. Its two operating companies merged into one:
    • BellSouth Telecommunications, LLC, a currently existing regional LEC, includes Southern Bell & South Central Bell
  • Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
• Verizon Communications, Inc., formerly Bell Atlantic Corporation, a currently existing holding company
  • NYNEX Corporation, a former RBOC holding company
    • Verizon New England, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
    • Verizon New York, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon Delaware LLC, a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon Maryland, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon New Jersey, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon Washington, D.C., Inc., a currently existing regional LEC
  • Verizon Virginia, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC

The following telephone companies are considered independent of the Baby Bells:

• CenturyLink, Inc., a currently existing independent LEC holding company
  • CenturyTel of the Northwest, Inc., a non-Bell holding company acquired in 1997
    • CenturyTel of Eagle, Inc., a regional LEC that acquired U S WEST Communications lines in 1994
    • CenturyTel of the Midwest-Kendall, LLC, a regional LEC that acquired Wisconsin Bell lines in 1998
  • Qwest Communications International, Inc., a holding company acquired in 2011; originally a non-Bell company, acquired and merged U S WEST in 2000.
    • Qwest Services Corporation, a holding company within the Qwest corporate structure
      • Qwest Corporation, a currently existing regional LEC, originally Mountain Bell, includes defunct Malheur Bell, Northwestern Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell
        • The El Paso County Telephone Company, a currently existing regional LEC
• Cincinnati Bell, Inc., a currently existing independent LEC holding company
  • Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company LLC, a currently existing LEC of which AT&T owned 27.8% before 1984 and thus was left separate in the 1984 break-up
• Comcast Corporation, a currently existing cable television holding company
  • Comcast MO Group, Inc., the original U S WEST; spun off a "new" U S WEST and changed its name to MediaOne in 1998; acquired by AT&T in 1999; sold to Comcast in 2002
• FairPoint Communications, Inc., a currently existing independent LEC holding company
  • Fremont Telcom Co., a regional LEC created when U S WEST Communications in portions of Idaho were sold in 1995
  • Northern New England Telephone Operations LLC, a regional LEC created when Verizon New England lines in Maine and New Hampshire were sold to FairPoint in 2008
    • Telephone Operating Company of Vermont LLC, a regional LEC created when Verizon New England lines in Vermont were sold to FairPoint in 2008
• Frontier Communications Corporation, a currently existing independent LEC holding company
  • Frontier Communications ILEC Holdings, Inc., an LEC holding company created by Verizon and sold to Frontier in 2010
    • Frontier West Virginia, Inc., a currently existing regional LEC, formerly C&P Telephone of West Virginia

The following companies were spun off after 1984 from AT&T Corp. or the Baby Bells and do not provide telephone service.

• Alcatel-Lucent, a currently existing equipment/research company
  • Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., a research company spun off separately in 1995 and merged with Alcatel in 2006
    • Western Electric Company, Incorporated, a former telecommunications and recording equipment-manufacturing company that ceased to have that name as of the 1984 break-up
      • Alcatel-Lucent Bell, a present-day subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent that was founded in Antwerp, Belgium in 1882, by Western Electric. It came into Alcatel-Lucent ownership via ITT and Alcatel.
    • Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., the former AT&T-corporate research unit
• Avaya, Inc., a currently -existing equipment manufacturing company spun off from Lucent in 2000
• LSI Corporation, a currently existing holding company
  • Agere Systems, incorporated on August 1, 2000, the former Micro Electronics subsidiary of Lucent was then spun off in 2002 and acquired by LSI in 2007
• Systimax Solutions, the Western Electric Structured Cabling unit, once known as AT&T Network Systems was spun off from Avaya in 2002 and is now part of CommScope
• Telefonaktiebolaget L. M. Ericsson, a Swedish communications company
  • Telcordia Technologies, Inc., a currently existing research company, formerly known as Bell Communications Research (Bellcore)

Beginning in 1991, the Baby Bells began to consolidate operations or legally rename their Bell Operating Companies according to the parent company name, such as "Bell Atlantic – Delaware, Inc." or "U S WEST Communications, Inc.", to "unify" the corporate image. To this day, the only remaining Baby Bell that has not renamed its operating companies is AT&T, formerly SBC Communications. Since 2001, there have only been 17 the original 22 Bell Operating Companies, following the mergers of U S WEST's and BellSouth's operating companies and reincorporation of Southwestern Bell. Only 9 those 19 have retained their original corporate name since their incorporation before 1984.

Before the 1956 break-up, the Bell System also included the companies listed below. Bell Canada, Northern Electric, and the Caribbean regional operating companies were considered part of the Bell System proper before the 1956 break-up. Nippon Electric was considered a more distant affiliate of Western Electric than Northern Electric, where Nippon Electric via its own research and development adapted the designs of Western Electric's North American telecommunications equipment for use in Japan, which to this day gives much of Japan's telephone equipment and network a closer resemblance to North American ANSI and Telcordia standards than to European-originated ITU-T standards. Before the 1956 break-up, Northern Electric was predominantly focused only on manufacturing without any significant amount of separate telecommunication-equipment research & development of its own. The post-World War II-occupation operation of NTT was considered an administrative adjunct to the North American Bell System.

• BCE Inc. (Bell Canada Enterprises), a currently existing holding company
  • Bell Canada, a current LEC
• Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly Northern Telecom, a currently existing equipment-manufacturing company
  • Northern Electric, a former telecommunications equipment-manufacturing subsidiary of Western Electric
  • Dominion Electric, a former recording equipment-manufacturing company
• Various former Caribbean regional operating companies, sold to ITT
• NEC, a currently existing equipment-manufacturing company in Japan
  • Nippon Electric, a former telecommunications equipment-manufacturing company 54% owned by Western Electric
• NTT, a currently existing telecommunications company in Japan that was administered by AT&T as part of General Douglas MacArthur's post-WWII reconstruction

Manhole cover with Bell System logo

In popular culture[link]

• From 1940 to 1968 the company sponsored The Bell Telephone Hour on NBC radio and (later) television. The program was devoted to concert performances by various singers and musicians.
• Steven Spielberg's 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial includes a scene where the title character watches a television commercial for the Bell System, prompting the famous line, "E.T. phone home!" Later that same year the E.T. character appeared in one of Bell's "Reach out and touch someone" ads.
• In the climax of the 1967 satirical film The President's Analyst, it is revealed that "The Phone Company" (TPC) - an obvious allusion to Bell Telephone - is planning a massive conspiracy to surgically implant communications devices into the brains of its customers. Also featured is a TPC-produced propaganda film that parodies The Bell Laboratory Science Series that Frank Capra produced for Bell Laboratories in the 1950s.

See also[link]

• Bell Telephone Company
• Bell Telephone Memorial
• Bell System divestiture
• RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company)
• American Telephone & Telegraph Company
• Independent telephone company
• Push-button telephone
• The Telephone Cases

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

External links[link]

• Bell.com
• Bell System Memorial
• Blue Bell Telephone Sign History — New England Telephone and Telegraph
• AT&T Corporation (1885-2005 company) History
• BellSouth vs. FCC — reference for company names
• USPTO — see trademark database

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Saul Bass (May 8, 1920 – April 25, 1996) was a graphic designer and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his design of film posters and motion picture title sequences.

During his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the credits racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that races together and apart in Psycho.

Bass designed some of the most iconic corporate logos in North America, including the AT&T "bell" logo in 1969, as well as AT&T's "globe" logo in 1983 after the breakup of the Bell System. He also designed Continental Airlines' 1968 "jetstream" logo and United Airlines' 1974 "tulip" logo which became some of the most recognized airline industry logos of the era.

Early life[link]

Saul Bass was born on May 8, 1920, in the Bronx, New York, to Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents. He graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx and studied part-time at the Art Students League in Manhattan until attending night classes with György Kepes at Brooklyn College.^[1] He began his time in Hollywood during the 1940s doing print work for film ads, until he collaborated with filmmaker Otto Preminger to design the film poster for his 1954 film Carmen Jones. Preminger was so impressed with Bass's work that he asked him to produce the title sequence as well. This was when Bass first saw the opportunity to create something more than a title sequence, but to create something which would ultimately enhance the experience of the audience and contribute to the mood and the theme of the movie within the opening moments. Bass was one of the first to realize the creative potential of the opening and closing credits of a movie.

Film title sequences[link]

Bass became widely known in the film industry after creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). The subject of the film was a jazz musician's struggle to overcome his heroin addiction, a taboo subject in the mid-'50s. Bass decided to create a controversial title sequence to match the film's controversial subject. He chose the arm as the central image, as the arm is a strong image relating to drug addiction. The titles featured an animated, white on black paper cut-out arm of a heroin addict. As he expected, it caused quite a sensation.

For Alfred Hitchcock, Bass provided effective, memorable title sequences, inventing a new type of kinetic typography, for North by Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), working with John Whitney, and Psycho (1960). It was this kind of innovative, revolutionary work that made Bass a revered graphic designer. Before the advent of Bass’s title sequences in the 1950s, titles were generally static, separate from the movie, and it was common for them to be projected onto the cinema curtains, the curtains only being raised right before the first scene of the movie.^[2]

Bass once described his main goal for his title sequences as being to ‘’try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story”.^[3] Another philosophy that Bass described as influencing his title sequences was the goal of getting the audience to see familiar parts of their world in an unfamiliar way. Examples of this or what he described as “making the ordinary extraordinary” can be seen in Walk on the Wild Side (1962) where an ordinary cat becomes a mysterious prowling predator, and in Nine Hours to Rama (1963) where the interior workings of a clock become an expansive new landscape.^[4]

He designed title sequences for more than 40 years, and employed diverse film making techniques, from cut-out animation for Anatomy of a Murder (1958), to fully animated mini-movies such as the epilogue for Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and live action sequences. His live action opening title sequences often served as prologues to their films and transitioned seamlessly into their opening scenes. These “time before” title sequences either compress or expand time with startling results. The title sequence to Grand Prix (1966) portrays the moments before the opening race in Monte Carlo, the title sequence to The Big Country (1958) depicts the days it takes a stage coach to travel to a remote Western town, and the opening montage title sequence to The Victors (1963) chronicles the twenty seven years between WWI and the middle of WWII, where the film begins.

Toward the end of his career, he was rediscovered by James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese who had grown up admiring his film work.^[5] For Scorsese, Saul Bass (in collaboration with his wife Elaine Bass) created title sequences for Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), and Casino (1995), his last title sequence. His later work with Martin Scorsese saw him move away from the optical techniques that he had pioneered and move into the use of computerized effects. Bass’s title sequences featured new and innovative methods of production and startling graphic design.

In some sense, all modern opening title sequences that introduce the mood or theme of a film can be seen as a legacy of Saul Bass's innovative work. In particular, though, title sequences for some recent movies and television series, especially those whose setting is during the 1960s, have purposely emulated the graphic style of his animated sequences from that era. Some examples of title sequences that pay homage to Bass’s graphics and animated title sequences are Catch Me If You Can (2002)^[6], X-Men: First Class (2011)^[7], and the opening to the AMC series Mad Men.^[8]

Selected film title sequences and respective dates[link]

Logos and other designs[link]

Bass was responsible for some of the best-remembered, most iconic logos in North America, including both the Bell Telephone logo (1969) and successor AT&T globe (1983). Other well-known designs were Continental Airlines (1968), Dixie (1969) and United Airlines (1974). Later, he would produce logos for a number of Japanese companies as well.

Selected logos by Saul Bass and their respective dates (note that the links shown point to articles on the entities themselves, and not necessarily to the logos):

An analysis of a sample of Bass’s corporate logos in 2011 found them to have an unusual longevity. The most common cause of the demise of a Bass corporate logo (in the selection analyzed) was the demise of the company, rather than a corporate logo redesign. The average lifespan of a Bass logo is more than 34 years, and counting.^[11]

Movie posters[link]

Saul Bass designed emblematic movie posters that transformed the visuals of film advertising. Before Bass’s seminal poster for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), movie posters were dominated by depictions of key scenes or characters from the film, often both juxtaposed with each other. Bass’s posters, however, typically developed simplified, symbolic designs that visually communicated key essential elements of the film. For example, his poster for a Man with a Golden Arm, with a jagged arm and off-kilter typography, starkly communicates the protagonist's struggle with heroin addition. Bass's iconic Vertigo (1958) poster, with its stylized figures sucked down into the nucleus of a spiral vortex, captures the anxiety and disorientation central to the film. His poster for Anatomy of a Murder (1959), featuring the silhouette of a corpse jarringly dissected into seven pieces, makes both a pun on the film’s title and captures the moral ambiguities within which this court room drama is immersed.

He created some of his best known posters for films directed by Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Stanley Kubrick among others. His last commissioned film poster was created for Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), but it was never distributed^[12]. His poster work spanned five decades and inspired numerous other poster and graphic designers. Bass's film posters are characterized by a distinctive typography and minimalistic style.

Selected posters by Saul Bass, and their respective dates.

1950s[link]

Love in the Afternoon poster designed by Bass.

• Carmen Jones (1954)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• Edge of the City (1956)
• Storm Center (1956)
• Love in the Afternoon (1957)
• Saint Joan (1957)
• Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
• The Big Country (1958) (style b poster)
• Vertigo (1958)
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

1960s[link]

• Exodus (1960)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960) (design not used)
• One, Two, Three (1961)
• Advise & Consent (1962)
• The Cardinal (1963)
• In Harm's Way (1964)
• Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
• The Firemen's Ball (1967)
• The Two of Us (1967)
• Why Man Creates (1968)
• Very Happy Alexander (1969)

1970s[link]

• Such Good Friends (1971)
• Rosebud (1975)
• Bass on Titles (1978)
• Brothers (1977)
• Notes on the Popular Arts (1977)
• The Human Factor (1979)

1980s and 1990s[link]

• The Shining (1980)
• The Solar Film (1980)
• Return from the River Kwai (1989)
• Schindler's List (1993) (undistributed poster)

He received an unintentionally backhanded tribute in 1995, when Spike Lee's film Clockers was promoted by a poster that was strikingly similar to Bass's 1959 work for Preminger's film Anatomy of a Murder. Designer Art Sims claimed that it was made as an homage, but Bass regarded it as theft.^[13] Many film posters have been considered to be homages to Saul Bass’s posters. Some recent examples include, the theatrical release poster for Burn After Reading (2008) which incorporates Bass’s typography and style of figurative minimalism^[14], and a poster for Precious (2009) which includes elements from several of Bass’s posters, including Anatomy of a Murder.^[15] The cover art for the White Stripes' single The Hardest Button to Button is clearly inspired by the Bass poster for The Man with the Golden Arm.

In addition to movie posters, Bass designed numerous posters for film festivals, and several magazine, book, and album covers. He also designed five Academy Award Presentation posters and the Student Academy Award for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[16] In 1962 he illustrated his only children’s book, Henri’s Walk to Paris, written by Lenore Klein.^[17]

Filmmaker[link]

During the 1960s, Bass was asked by directors and producers not only to produce title sequences for their films, but also to visualize and storyboard key scenes and sequences within them. Bass has the unusual credit of “visual consultant” or “pictorial consultant” on five films. For Spartacus (1960), Bass as “visual consultant” designed key elements of the gladiator school and storyboarded the final battle between slaves and Romans. John Frankenheimer, the director of Grand Prix (1966), had Bass storyboard, direct, and edit all but one of the racing sequences for his film. For West Side Story (1961) Bass filmed the prologue, storyboarded the opening dance sequence, and created the ending title sequence.^[18]

It is Bass’s credited role as “pictorial consultant” for Alfred Hitchcock on Psycho (1960), however, that has caused some controversy. Bass claimed that he participated in directing the highlight scene of Psycho, the tightly edited shower-murder sequence, though several on set at the time (including star Janet Leigh) disputed his contention of "direction". However, it can be argued that said dispute was simply semantic in nature with Bass's use of the term "directing" reflecting his own perspective on the "directorial" value of his influential graphic contribution to the scene, while the position of Leigh and the others on set was based on the scene being literally directed by Hitchcock as the film director ultimately in charge of all artistic decisions.

The research of several film scholars on Hitchcock's production of Psycho validates the claim that Bass in his capacity as a graphic artist did indeed have a significant influence on the visual design and pacing of that famous scene. Hitchcock had asked Bass to produce storyboards for the shower-murder scene and for some other scenes in the film. For this, Bass received a credit as Pictorial Consultant as well as Title Designer. Janet Leigh told Donald Spoto that “the planning of the shower scene was left up to Saul Bass, and Hitchcock followed his storyboard precisely. Because of this . . . [the shooting] went very professionally,”^[19] and she told Stephen Rebello that “Mr. Hitchcock showed Saul Bass’s storyboards to me quite proudly, telling me in exact detail how he was going to shoot the scene from Saul’s plans”.^[20]

Bill Krohn has noted that Bass's 48 story board panels for the scene introduced all the key aspects of the final shower-murder scene, namely the fact that the attacker would be seen as a silhouette, the shower curtain torn down, a close-up of the shower head from below, a high angle shot of the murder scene with the curtain rod used as a barrier and the famous shot of the transition from the drainage hole of the bathtub to Marion Crane's dead eye which as Krohn notes is reminiscent of Bass's iris titles for Vertigo.^[21] Krohn also concludes that Bass did not literally direct the shower-murder scene, proving Hitchcock's presence on the set throughout the shooting of that scene conclusively.^[21]

Bass introduced the idea of using a montage of fast cuts and tight framing to render a violent, bloody murder as an impressionistic and nearly bloodless one. Hitchcock felt uncertain about Bass’s conception of the scene fearing that audiences might not accept such a stylized and quickly cut sequence. In an interview with film historian Pat Kirkham, Bass recalled, “Having designed and storyboarded the shower sequence, I showed it to Hitch. He was uneasy about it. It was very un-Hitchcockian in character. He never used that kind of quick cutting; he loved the long shot”^[22].

To convince Hitchcock that the scene would work as planned, eight days before shooting of the final shower scene, Bass used a newsreel camera and Janet Leigh’s stand-in Marli Renfro to shoot footage on the set to plan the shots in more detail. Working with Hitchcock's editor George Tomasini, he edited this footage following the storyboards to show Hitchcock how the scene could work. In the end, Hitchcock gave his approval but, according to Kirkham, made two additions: a spray of blood on the chest of Marion Crane/Janet Leigh as she slides down the tiles, and a close-up of her belly getting stabbed.^[23]

In 1964, Bass directed a short film titled The Searching Eye shown during the 1964 New York World's Fair, coproduced with Sy Wexler. He also directed a short documentary film called Why Man Creates which won an Academy Award Oscar in 1968. An abbreviated version of that film was broadcast on the first episode of the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes, on September 24 of that year. In 2002, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[24] Saul Bass co-directed with his wife Elaine Bass several other short films, two of which were nominated for Academy Award Oscars; Notes on the Popular Arts in 1977, and The Solar Film in 1979, the latter for which Robert Redford was the executive producer.

In 1974, he made his only feature length film as a director, the visually splendid though little-known science fiction film Phase IV, a "Quiet, haunting, beautiful, [...] and largely overlooked, science-fiction masterwork".^[25]

Quotes[link]

This section is a candidate to be copied to Wikiquote using the Transwiki process.

"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it."^[26]

"Design is thinking made visual."

"There is nothing glamorous in what I do. I'm a working man. Perhaps I'm luckier than most in that I receive considerable satisfaction from doing useful work which I, and sometimes others, think is good."^[27]

"Symbolize and summarize."^[28]

See also[link]

	Design portal
	Biography portal
	United States portal
	Film portal

• Motion graphic
• Kinetic typography
• Paul Rand
• Richard Amsel
• Jack Davis
• Frank Frazetta
• The Brothers Hildebrandt
• Tom Jung
• Frank McCarthy
• Bob Peak
• Drew Struzan
• Howard Terpning

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Kirkham, Pat and Jennifer Bass (2011). Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design. London: Laurence King. ISBN 978-1-85669-752-1.
• Tomislav Terek (2001). Saul Bass on Titles: Film Titles Revealed. Defunkt Century. ISBN 1-903792-00-2.

External links[link]

• Saul Bass at the Internet Movie Database
• Saul Bass at Find a Grave
• Saul Bass on the Web
• Saul Bass in the Looniverse
• Bio-film & resources on Saul Bass
• Title sequences from Saul Bass (videos & commentary)
• Titles designed by Saul Bass (still sequences & commentary)
• Pitch video for 1969 Bell System logo, uniform, and vehicle redesign