In 1981, Amsel created an illustration of Marilyn Monroe for RCA home video's release of THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH on videodisc. The portrait was later repurposed by Cinema Collectors, a movie memorabilia store in Hollywood, for their advertising campaigns in magazines and flyers.
While the store has long been closed, I fondly recall seeing these ads in movie magazines. In fact, one such ad prompted me to contact them and order my very first movie poster. I was too young then to have a checking account of my own, so my mom took care of it for me. (It's easy to guess which poster I ordered!)
I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to show some of the "restoration" work I've been doing on Amsel's artwork, in preparation for the documentary and book. And this was one of the easier examples.
First was this scan I made from an old, small photograph of the artwork from many years ago. I did my best to clean it up, but the source image was not ideal. I knew that a better picture would have to be found if I wanted to feature it more prominently in a book or film.
Thanks to eBay, I recently purchased the RCA videodisc, which featured a much better version of the artwork. I digitally cleaned it up, which you can compare here:
For completion's sake, I then isolated the art from the (very) pink background. After all these years, it's nice to finally have a decent digital version of this image in high resolution:
P.S.: Does anyone still have a videodisc player?