Robin Johnson

Times Square 8 x 10″ publicity stills from this series continue to turn up. The first ones I found, I didn’t realize where they had come from, but the UK Press Kit’s caption sheet that matched up with some of the numbers on the photos solved the mystery. Their distinguishing characteristic is a small handwritten identification number in a tiny inset square along the bottom edge. Some have “TIMES SQUARE” stamped on the back. These have captions typed on a strip of paper pasted to their backs.

Photo 20 is the most-used publicity still from the movie, with the exceptions of the headshots of Trini and Robin that were used for the North American movie poster and the soundtrack album cover. I listed its various appearances when it showed up in Film Review Vol. 31 No. 1. Not in that list is photoplay Vol. 32 No. 4, where it also appeared, three months later. This specific version, numbered 20, was used as half of one of the two-photos-on-one-print 8×10’s that had Robert Stigwood’s name misspelled. It would make sense if the other three of those images were part of this series, especially since the caption for this one is identical on both versions, but I can’t see any numbers on the others.

Photo 26 is making its first and only (as far as I know at the moment) appearance here. It was part of the UK series of stills, but not used in any other country, and never published in any magazine or newspaper. (That I’ve yet found, at least.) It was evidently taken at the same time as the shot of Johnny and Pammy used on the Italian lobby poster, which will also later be a German lobby card.

The captions pasted to the photo backs both include the text “A scene from “TIMES SQUARE” distributed by COLUMBIA/EMI/WARNER Film Distributors”, Columbia/EMI/Warner being the film’s distributor in the UK.

The highest number photo in this series I’ve yet found is 36. I have thirteen of them. If I get an even 15 I’ll put up a gallery of just them. Till then, you can see them in these posts:

Times Square UK Press Kit (post 2 of 4)
Times Square UK Press Kit (post 3 of 4)
“6”
the page you’re reading right now
UK Promo Photo #29
“34”
Nicky Marotta, 1980

[In the two months that elapsed between my writing this page and my writing this note, shortly before this post is scheduled to be published, I did indeed acquire two more pictures from this series, plus one more that looks like it belongs but has the same number as another photo… so they will go up as soon as I can get them ready, followed by a post showing them all at once.]