The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), in its wide horizontal format. One crooked black arm hangs from a bar, all broken angles, and that single shape stands in for Frank Sinatra's heroin addict without showing a needle or a star's face. Bass carried the same arm into the film's opening titles, so the campaign and the screen share one symbol, and the clutter of the usual star-photo poster is gone. The orange hand-drawn lettering wraps around the arm instead of sitting on top of it.