May the Force Be With You – Hildebrandt Twins New Jersey Connection
Star Wars Hildabrandt Somerset Hills Mr Local History header
The Brothers Hildebrandt – Creating the original Star Wars poster was just the tip of the iceberg.
May the 4th Be With You!!!!!
1977—Star Wars. The Hildebrandt twins produced the finished poster in 36 hours, taking turns sleeping and painting after drawing the figures on the panel. “I think we spent about four hours working on it together,” said Hildebrandt. They also produced the poster without having seen the movie.
UPDATE: The world lost Greg Hildebrandt on October 31, 2024 at 85. May the force ALWAYS be with you in heaven.
Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, better known to the illustration world as “The Brothers Hildebrandt,” began their careers in 1959. The Brothers have worked on thousands of illustrations for textbooks, children’s books, calendars, book covers, posters, comic books, advertisements, movie posters, film production design, collectables, and trading card games. They are often referred to as “fantasy artists.”
People don’t know that Tim Hildebrandt was a proud Gladstone resident for over 30 years. Let’s look at Tim and Greg, these iconic artist twin superheroes who created more modern artwork than most can imagine.
Early Years in Detroit
Greg and Tim Hildebrandt were born five minutes apart, in that order, on Feb. 23, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan. Greg said the duo started drawing at 3, having been fascinated by Walt Disney’s Pinocchio.
Tim & Greg grew up in Detroit.
The names Greg and Tim Hildebrandt are well known to fans of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Secret of Nimh, The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, comics, pin-ups, and fantasy. However, long before their involvement with these, they produced art and animation for the iconic Jam Handy Organization. Though only employed at the company for about 6 years, their time at the studio was a fantastic experience that impacted their careers.
From 1957 to 1963 were what Greg considers to be the highlight of his and Tim’s career as they learned the filmmaking business from a studio that was “dedicated,” “fantastic,” and an “imaginative space.” Source: Greg Hildebrandt interview.
Through contacts they made at Jam Handy, they received a unique offer from TV personality Bishop Fulton J. Sheen to work on a series of documentaries on world poverty. The bishop was a highly respected, famous Catholic TV and Radio personality, and as Greg and Tim felt this was their calling, they took the job in a heartbeat. His production company was located in New York City, thus requiring them to move there from Detroit. Their 1963 departure was sad to many at the Jam Handy Organization, especially to Frank Goldman, as they saw Greg and Tim hopefully running the animation department in the coming years. Off to the shine of NYC they went.
Famous Star Wars Call
In 1975, Greg and Tim illustrated the first of a series of Lord of the Rings calendars for Ballantine Books. This series of paintings launched the two men into international fame, with over a million calendars sold, and the name The Brothers Hildebrandt® was born!
Greg and Tim were big Disney fans, particularly of Sleeping Beauty and Eyvind Earle. The “Twins,” as they were referred to seemed to work in a parallel level of awareness like a right and left hand. The Animation Department Head, Bob Kennedy would schedule them on opposite shifts when they had a short deadline on productions since they could duplicate each other’s work. But doing this the work was completed in half the time that one person would take accordingly.
Ray Pointer – Jam Handy Organization
On May 16, 1977, Greg and Tim received a phone call asking if they could create a movie poster that a director (George Lucas) needed for “some kind of science fiction movie.” The original Star Wars movie (Episode IV—A New Hope) was to be released in just nine days on Wednesday, May 25, 1977.
Getting the work done twice as fast. Greg and Tim were fantastic collaborators.
“The movie was being released in just 9 days. Who is the guy with the black thing on his head?” the brothers inquired.“Oh, it’s a mask or something,” the team that liaised for Lucas replied.
Tim Hildebrandt in a 1987 Bernardsville News interview.
1977—Star Wars. They produced the poster without having seen the movie.
Greg and Tim Hildebrandt disappeared to their studio for 36 hours and emerged with their creation. They showed it a day later, and they loved it.
As they say, the rest is history.
I should have talked more about Star Wars — the fuller story of the movie poster is wild, including my dad. mom, and I going to the East Coast premier. When you have the time, here’s the hour long video about it.
Charles Hildebrandt on the Star Wars Movie Poster
Tim Leaves Jersey City for Gladstone
It’s just a train away from Jersey City, Historic, and Affordable.
In 1970, seven years BEFORE the infamous Star Wars call, Tim Hildebrandt decided, like many others, that Jersey City didn’t give him what they wanted to raise a family. Like many in the NYC suburbs, you want to stay connected to New York via train but be far enough away. Gladstone is as far as you can get on the Peapack Gladstone branch, so Gladstone was. They purchased a modest three-story Victorian house on Jackson Avenue in Gladstone, New Jersey.
The Hildebrandts’ Gladstone home-inspired drawings, paintings, and even the movie. The Victorian home, built around 1895, was sold to another graphic artist in June 2019. Funny, right?
We found this old photo of the same home c.1900.
Inside the home, alongside an entire wall, Tim painted a mural recently found behind wallpaper by the new homeowner. You can see the ties to dragons and castles similar to those found in Tim’s Lord of the Rings paintings.
“The calendar was Tim Hildebrandt’s idea”, his brother remembered. “I wanted to pursue gallery art at that point, but Tim was pushing and pushing” on the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, “and then I read it and said OK.” The calendar project was their studio’s second-best-known, after their poster for the 1977 movie “Star Wars.”
The 1978 edition of the Hildebrandt brothers’ JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings calendar. The Star Wars poster was the only item to outsell the calendar series. The calendar started for them from 1976 to 1978 with Ballentine Books. The million-selling Lord of the Rings calendars created during the ’70s are now considered artistic masterpieces.
It was a wacky old Victorian with turrets and cupolas. I think it’s still standing. Definitely not a mansion. It was crammed with paintings and knick-knacks back in the day. And yes, they filmed it around the house. Mrs. H. must have been very patient.
John Waldron – Charles’ close friend and college roommate.
“Happy Christmas to All!” by Tim Hildebrandt for the book “A Night Before Christmas,” illustrated by Tim and Greg Hildebrandt. Tim and Rita’s house in Gladstone, New Jersey, appeared in many of Tim’s paintings. Source: Spiderwebart
Start a new local holiday tradition. These books have illustrations of Tim’s Gladstone home.
During that separation, Tim Hildebrandt illustrated calendars and painted covers for sci-fi fantasy magazines, including Amazing Stories, the Time of Transference, The Byworlder, and cards for the Clue game, whose characters were based on Gladstone residents he knew.
It was noted that Tim Hildebrandt’s cards for the Clue game “The Great Museum Caper” characters were based on Gladstone residents he knew and photographed. (Colonel Mustard Pictured above). In an interview, he stated that his wife Rita would make costumes and hand them out to locals where a photo was taken. Then he’d do his thing. Source: Board Games Geek
The “Separation” and Tim’s Movie
For 12 years, starting in 1981, the two brothers separated and embarked on their own artistic journeys. Tim tried out filmmaking, and Greg worked on various projects.
Tim continued working on several projects after the “separation.” In 1982, Tim and his wife Rita Hildebrandt took the movie plunge and decided to make the sci-fi horror film The Deadly Spawn filmed in their Gladstone, New Jersey home. It starred their son Charles, a Bernards High student, over in Bernardsville. Tim, 46, then stated after the project, “I’d much rather be making a film than a painting.”
1983 -Tim produced the horror film The Deadly Spawn and appeared in a small role in the movie starring his son Charles George Hildebrandt. The film cost less than $30,000, and all of the actors worked for free on nights and weekends.
The film took over a year to complete and took place at Hildebrandt’s home. He said that there were corpses and blood everywhere, even on the lawn. In a town where they roll up at 6 p.m., they would walk by and just shake their heads, said Hildebrandt.
It’s mankind versus the ultimate eating machine! In the 1983 horror film The Deadly Spawn (also known as Return of the Aliens), a three-headed alien creature with some razor-harp teeth arrives on planet Earth for just one reason: to eat. Mixed with a metal soundtrack and similar references to the movie Alien, the film was an ’80s local cult classic.
The Deadly Spawn Plot:
A meteorite crashes to earth during a torrential thunderstorm, bringing with it a slimy, three-headed alien beast that craves human meat and gives birth to hundreds of eel-like spawn. The monster takes up residence in the basement of a family home, devouring the parents without anyone else’s knowledge. The oldest son Pete (Michael Robert Coleman) is a science major in college, and his younger brother Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt- Tim’s son) is a horror movie fanatic who loves to dress up like his favorite monsters and scare his visiting aunt and uncle. When an electrician arrives to check the fuse box, Charles follows him into the basement in costume for a little fun, but instead discovers the hideous alien and what’s left of his mother’s corpse. Meanwhile, two of Pete’s friends come over for a study session, bringing along the remains of a dead alien spawn that they found on the side of the road. Baffled, they dissect it in an effort to establish its origin, but it seems to defy everything they’ve ever been taught in class. Their intellectual curiosity is abandoned when they find Pete’s uncle being eaten by a swarm of alien spawn, and from there on it’s a fight for survival against the monster.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
June 18, 1981 – Tim and the Deadly Spawn at his home in Gladstone. Source: Bernardsville News
Trailer: The 1983 thriller The Deadly Spawn
Deadly Spawn article – Courier News July 11, 1981
The website Cool Ass Cinema wrote that the film is “not out to win any awards; it’s simply there to entertain and in the most energetically gruesome fashion possible.”
Charles, The Teen Actor, Grows Up
The Mr. Local History Project caught up with Charles Hildebrant, one of the actors who was a sensation then and quite the celebrity at Bernards High School in 1983.
Charles Hildebrandt, at 14, in the 1983 film The Deadly Spawn, which was shot entirely with unpaid actors in his house on Jackson Road in Gladstone.
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