Bass, Saul

▪ 1997

      U.S. graphic designer who created a number of corporate logos and won an Academy Award for the documentary short subject Why Man Creates but was best known for introducing a new art form with his opening credit sequences for such films as The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, West Side Story, and Psycho (b. May 8, 1921—d. April 25, 1996).

* * *

▪ American director

born May 8, 1920, New York, N.Y., U.S.

died April 25, 1996, Los Angeles, Calif.

      American motion-picture designer-director, especially noted for imaginative, animated titles, prologues, and epilogues.

      Bass studied at the Arts Students League in New York City, attended Brooklyn College, and worked as a freelance designer before moving to Los Angeles in 1946. Bass successfully directed and produced short animated films, television openings and commercials, live documentaries, and features. It was, however, his creative art direction of such motion pictures as Around the World In Eighty Days (1956), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), Spartacus (1960), Exodus (1961), West Side Story (1961), and That's Entertainment Part Two (1976) that secured his international reputation.

* * *