A NICHOLAS HAMMOND birthday salute…
It seems like for the last several years, there’s been a renewed appreciation of the 1970s The Amazing Spider-Man TV series starring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker.
I think part of it has to do with the 2021 multiversal movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, which had fans clamoring for a Hammond cameo. I think part has to do with Hammond’s downright brilliant performance as Sam Wanamaker in 2019’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. And, I think part of it has to do with 2025’s Marvel Legends Spider-Man ’77 figure from Hasbro.
Plus, people always want what they can’t get, so with Hammond’s The Amazing Spider-Man oddly unavailable on home video, interest in the show is only fueled further. (Not to mention that the series was pretty good.)
Anyway, Hammond was born 76 years ago, on May 15, 1950, and on his birthday it’s worth remembering that while he wasn’t the first live-action Spidey, he was the first to reach the big screen, considering that episodes of the show were recut for theatrical releases overseas.
Which brings us to this delectable movie poster that puts Hammond’s Spider-Man in a classic Steve Ditko pose:
You know the pose. You’ve seen it a million times:
It’s possible that the movie poster was for a U.K. release, given it’s in English, but I’m not 100 percent sure. There was at least one other version in both English and other languages:
That one’s mighty cool, but it’s the orange poster up top that really pops — and gives Hammond’s web-slinger a deservedly amazing showcase.
—
MORE
— Dig This INSIDE LOOK at the 1977 SPIDER-MAN TV Pilot. Click here.
— The SPIDER-MAN ’77 Marvel Legends Action Figure Is… AMAZING. Click here.
May 15, 2026
Happy birthday, Mr. Hammond. They were a fun movie escape in their day.
May 16, 2026
The pose is absolutely Ditko, but wasn’t this one of the posters that Marie Severin did for production, along with a Jack Kirby Captain America? The detail on the inking certainly looks like it.
May 18, 2026
We in New Zealand had that image on some of the advertising here. I went and looked an an old scrapbook I had as a kid, and I could only find this small ad from the movie listings page of the NZ Herald (looks like 1979 as it mentions Hammond flew over here to take part in our Telethon and the ad states he is making a public appearance at an Auckland cinema, ‘the Odeon.’)
https://images4.imagebam.com/5b/f1/41/ME1D6Y16_o.jpg