Sam Peffer

Samuel John Peffer (known as Peff; 3 November 1921 – 14 March 2014) was a British commercial artist who designed film posters, paperback book covers and the covers of home videos. His best known work was for the covers of the paperback James Bond novels published by Pan Books in the 1950s and 1960s, for which he created a consistent and distinctive style.

Peffer was born in Islington, London, into a poor family, the son of an interior decorator. He left school at 13, working first as an errand boy for Leon Goodman Displays, a company that produced front of house displays for cinemas. Soon he moved to Weddell Brothers who produced film publicity materials and when their artist was called up for military service in 1940, Peffer replaced him, painting publicity images of Hollywood film stars.

In 1942 he was called up to serve in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He saw action in Operation Pedestal, the convoys to Malta which was besieged by the Germans. He wrote of an attack on one convoy just after sunset:

Then they came. Little shapes in the distance, growing bigger as they approached the convoy. Every gun was cocked and ready. All hell broke loose as they began to dive and the ships began their fire. The noise was deafening, the guns pounding, the roaring of the engines as the dive-bombers screamed down at us. Bombs exploded all around, torpedoes were dropped as the Heinkels and Stukas came out of their dives. It was over quite quickly.

No ships were sunk in that attack, but later, a ship on which Peffer was serving was sunk by enemy action.

On leaving the Navy in January 1946, Peffer considered becoming a professional boxer, a sport in which he had ability, but instead decided to become a commercial artist. He attended a few evening classes at Hornsey School of Art in 1946 immediately after demob but otherwise learned his craft on the job. He worked for various firms in the film publicity business until eventually joining Pearl and Dean where he was in charge of the art department and knew John Vernon. He married Kitty (Kit) in 1949.

...
Wikipedia