The Strange History of Movie Bumpers
The origins of cinema’s most mysterious logos
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Before I ever wrote a word, I drew pictures. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I copied the comic strips in the Sunday paper, redrew Mad Magazines cover to fold-in, then started drawing my own ‘zines. As a spectacularly uncoordinated, chicken-legged boy with smudgy glasses, I was relieved to discover something I could actually do well at.
Out of this love of images grew my love of movies, and with it a particular fixation on “bumpers” - the animated production logos that precede them. In the 80s and 90s, many of these were indelibly strange, and some were downright unsettling. Even the studio emblems - a snow-capped mountain, a roaring lion, a woman with a torch, a boy fishing on the moon - carried a dreamy, esoteric charge. They primed you to enter the unknown.
To this day, I am a bumper nut. I’ve even been hired to make a few of them. But for as much as I enjoy these little animations, I’ve never known much about their origins. Who made them? What does their strange imagery represent?
Let’s explore together.
In 1895, the world's first and oldest film studio, the Gaumont Film Company, unveiled the “Marguerite” logo - a daisy named for founder Léon Gaumont’s mother. It is considered the first and longest-standing studio logo.
Across the ocean in Ogden, Utah, a man named William Wadsworth Hodkinson opened a movie theater in 1907. Each day, he looked out toward the jagged Wabash Mountains, anchored by the towering Ben Lomond Peak. After setting off for Los Angeles to start his own movie studio, Hodkinson drew that mountain on a napkin. Circling it with a crown of stars, the Paramount Pictures logo was born.
Other iconic studio logos followed. 20th Century Fox had its rousing fanfare written by composer Alfred Newman. MGM had a roaring lion and classy Latin slogan (‘Ars gratia artis,’ art for art’s sake). In the early years, when movies were silent, MGM planted a phonograph behind the screens in each movie house and played the lion’s roar on cue.
Then there was Universal, whose 1937 logo dazzles me to this day.
The inscrutable majesty of these logos has long invited urban legend. There was a rumor that the MGM lion attacked and killed the director while filming (false). There’s also the hotly disputed identity of Columbia’s Torch Lady. Suspects include Wizard of Oz bit player Amelia Batchler, Evelyn Venable (who voiced the Blue Fairy in Disney’s Pinocchio), actresses Claudia Dell, Jane Bartholomew, and at one point, Annette Bening. Columbia has always opted stay silent on the matter, allowing the mystery to linger and spread.
By the television era, production companies were using innovative cel animation to create logos. Mark VII, Revue Studios, and Desilu were among the first to do so.
Around the world, movie logos were evolving as an art form. Back in France, early iconic logos like Pathé gave way to spellbinding experimental works, such as this nightmarish logo for Cocinor created by Russian-born artist Alexandre Alexeieff. He used an animation technique known as totalization - the process of filming a moving object at long exposures to capture the trace of the path of motion.
By the mid-70s, all major studios (except Universal) had switched their logos over to cel animation. Early computer graphics programs such as Scanimate also came into play at this time.
The home video era of my youth was a golden age for “creepy” computerized company logos - often accompanied by stabbing synths and strange voices.
From the 1990s onward, most bumpers became glossier and CGI-generated - but the art form continues to thrive. In the current era, having a memorable production logo might be more important than ever. Consider what A24 has done - harkening back to golden era nostalgia, while creating playful variations, like this one from Jonah Hill’s Mid 90s (2018).
I have compiled a collection of some of my favorite bumpers below - including the strangest and most nightmarish of them all. But first, the news.
News Reel
How will human artists take their claim in a world of AI slop? Entertainment Strategy Guy has a useful acronym - LATCH. “Live: Humans want to watch other humans do amazing things; Analog: Today, people buy hand-crafted goods and they will buy hand-crafted goods in the future; Trusted: Some humans want to read and watch trusted sources of news; Curated: In the age of the algorithm, flawed human curation will, ironically, become more valuable; Human: Human provenance matters, but proving this will be key.”
Olivia Rutigliano, editor of Lithub, CrimeReads, and repeat special guest here at Underexposed, has launched Culture Schlock, an exciting new podcast that examines highs and lows of culture via conversations with artists, writers, critics, and experts. Last week, she spoke to David Denby, legendary former film critic at The New Yorker. This week, I’ll be speaking with her about prestige. Be sure to subscribe here!
Ed William has a roundup of great film book recommendations that you absolutely must check out, featuring selections from Cole Haddon, Decarceration, Courtney Daniels and more.
A special thanks to Sean Glass of Reunion for hosting a conversation about Filmstack with Mike Hogan of Filmmaker Magazine, Adam Kritzer and myself. Here are some photos courtesy of Alan McIntyre:
This week’s Underexposed Movie Pick:
Withnail and I (1987, Bruce Robinson)
Withnail and I is a delightfully sodden cult comedy about two out-of-work actors in London, scraping by on booze and bravado. Loosely based on Robinson's life in London in the late 1960s, the film follows Richard E. Grant as the substance-addled, catastrophically self-assured Withnail and Paul McGann as his anxious companion. Often ranked among the best British movies ever made, Withnail and I enjoyed a passionate cult following after its release on home video, even inspiring a drinking game in which you match Withnail drink for drink. I would not recommend this, but do watch this movie if ever you need a laugh.
Where to watch Withnail and I
Now streaming on the Criterion Channel.
That’s all for the free edition. Below, paid subscribers can access Bumper Crop, my curated list of movie bumpers, as well as this week’s Off The Shelf.
