- He entered the film industry in 1954 when he developed the advertising campaign for Carmen Jones, an Otto Preminger production.
- He devised the title sequence of ‘Man with the Golden Arm’; the initial title track consisted of a series of animated rectangular shapes that marched into position to form an arm. The arm, continually distorted, accented further the movie's central theme of drug addition. The design of the arm developed into the basis of an advertising campaign, although the smoothly animated quality of the sequence, as it was originally designed, was eliminated from the final track.
- Nicknamed ‘Master of Movie Titles’, Bass came up with more and more ideas for title sequences, each described as a piece of artwork.
- Paula Haskin stated, "His titles are integral to the film. When his work comes up on the screen, the movie itself truly begins."
- Among the more memorable title shots by Bass was an ingenious cacophony of text and graphic fills that introduced Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest in 1959. That same year, when Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder appeared, the Bass-produced title sequence hit hard, with a cartoon-like silhouette of a segmented human body.
- He was described as ‘limitless in creativity’.
- Almost inevitably, Bass went on to direct complete films, mostly of the genre known as "shorts." In his first such foray in 1962 he produced a film called Apples and Oranges
- Bass’s final movie title before his death was Casino, The Casino opener depicts an explosive reverie, wherein actor Robert De Niro transcends earth and symbolically dives into hell. With the surreal imagery Bass created an atmosphere of unscrupulous depravity and greed, intended to characterize the aura of Las Vegas
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