THE POWER (1968) - movie poster painting (prototype)

An unused movie poster design for the 1968 film, THE POWER. Not 100% sure who the artist is but I lean towards Gray Morrow, who is credited with painting the used movie poster design (and to my eye, there are strong similarities). The movie was both George Pal and Byron Haskin's last outing on the big screen (WAR OF THE WORLDS is probably their best-known and loved collaboration). I'm a big fan of George Pal's work . . . and director Byron Haskin was responsible for bringing my all-time-favourite OUTER LIMITS episode, 'Demon With a Glass Hand' to life based on Harlan Ellison's powerful teleplay. Adrian Olivera was the former owner of this artwork, consigning it for auction with Profiles in History, late last year. At the time of the artwork's listing, I'd completely forgotten about the George Pal and Byron Haskin connection (it was a fairly low-key movie, and the PIH write-up was lacking in background information). I really liked the art but when I looked into PIH's bidding requirements found it all a bit too demanding to want to entertain. When the artwork failed to sell in auction, I posted on my MOVIE POSTER Original Artwork FB group that I'd likely be interested in buying it directly from Adrian once the painting was returned to him. Adrian was non-committal about his future intentions for the art, being kind of vague and giving me confusing signals. No price was given and he stated that two other collectors were potentially interested in the art . . . which led me to believe that the three of us would likely be played off against one another in a private auction scenario. From the bits of conversation that made it to my FB group, my old friend Richie Halegua picked up on all of this and sent me a private message offering to buy the painting on my behalf directly from PIH as a post-auction purchase - which I could then re-imburse at cost price. Richie did all of this as a personal favour and would not entertain my suggested offer of paying him some extra cash as a kind of 'thank you'. That terrific gesture saved me all the heartache and frustration of trying to work something out with Adrian (and the likelihood of being pitted off against two other collectors which would no doubt have driven the price up). Thanks again, Richie, you're a good guy and a class-act in this hobby.