Author: Postercowboy

Sometimes, even a bad reputation is an obligation: This week a DHL parcel was returned to the sender as ‘recipient unknown’. The package was addressed to Galerie filmposter.net Helmut Hamm. It also included the correct street name, number and ZIP code, so there is NO DOUBT that the hired help driving the DHL truck must’ve been RIGHT IN FRONT of my shop.

The DHL return label states ‘Returned after address verification: The recipient could not be identified: Name not on doorbell/mailbox.’

You have to give to them, I do not have a doorbell and the mailbox is behind the green door, so TECHNICALLY the DHL moron was correct. What I DO HAVE though is a HUGE sign above a SHOP WINDOW and you would THINK that should be good enough for anyone, wouldn’t you? Better think again. Honest to God, where do they even find these people?

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Starting tomorrow, President Trump the Great and Wonderful has canceled the $800 duty-free limit for MOST imports to the US.

Good news is, there are a few exemptions, which include records, CDs, various other collectibles, and, ta-taa, POSTERS!

For these, the $800 duty-free limit is still standing, provided the customs declaration is properly filled. The TARIC Code for posters is 4911.9100 and this MUST show on the declaration. Rest assured, we know how to do the necessary paperwork.

Due to the new regulations, DHL Parcel Post has suspended services to the US for the foreseeable future. Due to their unacceptable runtimes and limited tracking, Galerie filmposter.net has suspended DHL Parcel Post years ago.

These days, we use either UPS or DHL Express exclusively for deliveries to the US, and both their services are not affected by the Parcel Post ban.

You can find the details on the new tariff exemptions here:

Trump Tariff Exemption: IEEPA and 50 USC 1702(b)(3)

So it looks like either the Great and Wonderful President Trump or one of his super-rich friends might be a poster collector, who would’ve thought!

Be that as may, the exemption is quite a relief of course and the first good news we have received from the White House in LONG time…

Happy Trails,

Postercowboy

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Heritage Auctions in Dallas, the world’s largest auction house for collectibles, just published their annual sales report for 2024: Total turnaround was 1.867 Billion Dollars. That’s $1,867,000,000.00.
Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers from THE WIZARD OF OZ sold for $32.5 Million, making them one of most expensive collectibles ever sold.

They also sold almost $10 Million in movie posters. On first glance, this is a lot of money, but if you break it down, it only makes for little over 0.5% of Heritage’s total income. Let’s face it, in the big picture that IS somewhat embarrassing… Or as my old pal Rich Haluega from Las Vegas put it: ‘movie posters is the red-headed step-child of collectibles.’

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Here’s another one I had not seen before: The original release German movie poster for SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD, the 1956 Lowell Thomas documentary. I have seen the souvenir program, but never the actual poster:

The movie opened in Berlin on September 23, 1960, roughly eleven months before the wall was built. I always liked posters that were printed for a single cinema, and this one is actually somewhat special:
The movie played at the Sportpalast, a multi-purpose venue in Berlin-Schöneberg that held an audience of 10,000. Joseph Goebbels’ infamous ‘Total War’ speech was held at the Sportpalast in 1943. The building was torn down in 1973. Here’s a photo from the mid-1950s, you can see the cinema entrance on the right:

Two other things are noteworthy about this poster:

Admission prices started at 2,50 DM (app. €1,25), which must’ve been on the lower end of admission prices for premiere cinemas at the time. Yet, we can assume that the better seats were a lot more expensive, as Cinerama was quite a big deal.
Instead of buying your tickets directly at the cinema, they could also be purchased at any other box office in Berlin.

When this film was shown, Berlin was a divided city, but it was still possibly to travel between the East and the West. Visitors from East-Berlin and East-Germany would get a special deal: They could pay in Deutsche Mark Ost, the East-German currency, with an exchange rate of 1:1:

Allowing visitors from the East to pay with their aluminium coins was probably not that unusual at the time (when the wall came down, I worked at venue in West-Berlin and for time, we accepted Ostmark as well). What does make this even more interesting: While it does offer some amazing footage (like the flight over an unnamed volcano, that almost caused the plane to crash due to a lack of oxygen) the film is that the movie is basically a nasty and quite blatant work of US propaganda. One reviewer on the IMDB compares it the works of Leni Riefenstahl. With the Cold War in full progress at the time it comes as no surprise that they tried to lure an East-German audience in.

One more fact I came across when researching the background of this poster: 1960 was also the year that saw an all-time high in the total number of cinemas in Germany: In this year, more than 8300 cinemas were active, 6950 in West-Germany and 1369 in the East. The decline of the cinema civilization started soon after, by 1971 the total number was down to 4163 (3314/849) (Source: de.statista.com).

The poster will go up for sale with my next website update in January.

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John B. Stetson was born on May 5, 1830. The Postercowboy saw the light of this world on the exact same day, 134 years later. Which could be merely a coincidence, of course.

Be that as may, yesterday marked my 60th birthday. I actually couldn’t care less about birthday celebrations, but Mrs. Postercowboy has a decidedly different attitude towards these matter, so yesterday I was in for a surprise party.

Welcome to

where we met a few close friends and spent the afternoon throwing axes! I had actually heard about this place before and always thought about going there but it ended up being one of the things I never got around doing and eventually forgot about.

Silly as it may sound, throwing axes is actually a lot of fun! Like any other sport, it does take some training to really get the hang of it, but it is serious fun from the very beginning. The first things they teach you at Woodcutter is the overhand throw, as seen in the image below. I did ok with that, but not great either.

Back in my teenage days, I liked to throw knives, mostly practising an underhand swing. Turned out ‘trick shot’ axe throwing uses pretty much the same technique I trained back then. Though I haven’t thrown a knife for about 45 years, the underhand throw came back quite natural and I turned out to be pretty good at it. Not that I could actually aim the axe, but hitting the board turned out a fairly easy task from the get go. Not bad for a first day I thought.

Advertising Break: I just checked my website and noticed that while I have a number of posters for William Castle’s gimmick films (that can all be seen HERE) what I do not have is a US Onesheet movie poster for HOMICIDAL, the one with the wonderful tagline ‘WARNING! Strait-Jacket vividly depicts axe murders!’ What a crying shame.

But since it was my birthday, I was in for my own privat axe murder! I managed to slice up my victim from the bottom with a couple of throws, so that its ‘sweet meats’ fell out but the entire thing stayed intact and I could take it home for a souvenir.

After the successful kill, the guys from Woodcutter made a Polaroid:

I think this turned out quite amazing, looks to me like something that could’ve come from a 1970s stalker and slasher movie. I love it!

To complete a perfect afternoon, we had burgers. Sixteen or sixty: Who cares!!!

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Today we have 23° C (73° F) and sunshine in Berlin and, as always in the first days of spring, the city becomes so much attractive!

The Postercowboy has always been a fashion victim of his own device, so this a great opportunity to show off a couple of recent aquisitions: As much as I love my felt cowboy hat Texas Hatters (www.texashatters.com) made for me many moons ago, it is decidedly too warm for summer, so I was looking for an alternative. I ended up getting a Stetson Open Road in vented straw:

Stetson invented this model in 1937. It has been around ever since and has been worn by presidents and entertainment stars alike.

Currently, Stetson shows an image of Lyle Lovett on their homepage with his Open Road. That’s the guy who wrote ‘Don’t touch me Hat’:

If it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

If you’re not familiar with this one, look it up on Youtube. Great guy, great song.

Also, after some 30+ years I decided to retire my Ray Bans and upgrade to a pair of Persol 649 sunglasses. This model has been around since the 1950s, but it was of course made famous by Steve McQueen who wore them prominently in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR and also briefly in LE MANS, THE GETAWAY and BULLITT.

Advertising Break: I have a really nice linenbacked THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR Onesheet for sale:

https://www.filmposter.net/en/the-thomas-crown-affair-original-release-us-onesheet-movie-poster-1509-1.html

And just in case anyone has a nice condition copy of the original German poster that shows the Persol glasses for sale: Please drop me a note!

Actually, McQueen did not wear the 649, but the folding version that is labeled 714. Needless to say, I was originally planning to get a pair of 714s, but my optrician said they don’t stock them any more because the folding mechanism is not very reliable and the screws come loose after a while, causing the frame to become instable. Obviously, I don’t need that. Plus, the folding mechanism has more metal bling-bling at the nose bridge and on the sides and they are almost €100 more expensive than the regular version.

These are pretty BIG glasses, much bigger than my old Ray Bans, but they do look mighty cool and I like them a lot.

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The Kunstbibliothek Berlin is showing 300 original movie posters from their collection. Here are a few impressions.

What I really liked about the exhibition is that the focus lies on graphic design, not on important films. The exhibition is held on two floors, the upper one shows movie posters from 1905 to the 1970s, the lower floor covers the period from about 1980 to 2020, the most recent exhibit being a Teaser Advance US Onesheet for BARBIE.

I had the honor to assist the curators with a bit of expert advice (not that they needed to much of it, both Christina Thomson and Christina Dembney of the Kunstbibliothek did a very good job educating themselves on the subject).

They are also showing a part of my personal PLANET OF THE APES movie poster collection, with original release posters from 20 different countries. I thought I had taken photos of the POTA wall, but I either forgot or something went wrong… 🙁
A few of the posters are shown in person and the others in a digital slideshow, which works surprisingly well.

This being a vintage movie poster blog, this post will naturally focus on the upper floor. Generally speaking, my cultural perception and appreciation more or less ends in the early 1980s. That said, I was quite impressed by the wide range and the high level of creativity expressed in so many of the contemporary posters.

Here’s the entry hall of the museum, with a large and quite effective digital display:

The blue walls show posters in chronological order, while the red background signifies a certain topic. The exhibition starts off with a nice selection of silent film posters:

The absolute highlight of the Kunstbibliothek collection is of course the only surviving copy of the French billboard poster for METROPOLIS:

Part of the exhibition concept was to ask 26 celebrities with various ties to the movie business to name their favorite poster from the Kunstbibliothek collection. No disrespect to the other 25 participants, but in my perception, the only person who actually had something truly worthwhile to say about her choice was German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, who opted for the original release 1920 poster for Paul Wegener’s DER GOLEM:

There’s also the amazing German poster for FAUST (1926), together with a couple of original artworks for the film:

I knew that Karl Michel’s design won a movie poster contest. What I did not know: This was actually a contest held by UFA Studios for a FAUST movie poster with a surprising 359 participants! One of the runner-ups can also be seen in the first photo.

Another surprise was found on the ‘Paint and Pathos’ wall: From a collector’s point of view, most of the German posters shown are not overly special, some of them can still be found for a dime a dozen. With one exception: The original 1959 German poster for HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (Das Haus auf dem Geisterhügel). Thirty years ago, I would’ve been willing to give an arm and a leg for this one. I was a huge fan of William Castle’s gimmick films and at the time, I had all the German posters as well as the US Onesheets for all of these films in my collection. The one exception being the HOHH poster shown here, which I had never even seen before. Live and learn…

Why they chose to include the German poster for CHAPLIN HEIRAT (Chaplin marries) shown below I have no idea. I have never been the biggest Chaplin fan to begin with, but I very much liked the German poster for THE PILGRIM shown on another wall. This one makes me think that Kermit the Frog was modelled after the Chaplin face on this poster. Then again, beauty does lie in the eye of the beholder as they say…

UPDATE: After speaking to the curators again, I learned that this is not a poster after all, but an original concept artwork.

A good part of the show is dedicated to the posters from Atlas Films and Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner. Most oldschool collectors and/or of more traditional movie art have no use for this type of poster at all, but their entirely unique designs make them quite an important part of cinema history.
A good number of the posters shown in the exhibition are for sale on this website, like Hans Hillmann’s amazing re-release poster for LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD.

As stated before, I’m not overly interested in contemporary posters, but the lower floor is also very well curated and a pleasure to behold. Here’s a brief example:

Movie posters have been proclaimed dead for decades, but somehow they still survive. Another form of movie advertising that is almost dead by now is the housefront painting:

There’s only guy left in Berlin who still holds this tradition up and the exhibition shows a few of his works. I spoke to him at the opening and told me he’s going to retire next April, which will close this window of cinema advertising for good.

Last not least, a final impression from Potsdamer Platz. The place certainly looks a lot more atmospheric in the dark than it does in the daytime:

‘What is the film poster to us? An amusing flash in a crowded street, a faint chuckle, a brief distraction, perhaps even a cause for reflection. In any event, it is a chance for the fine artist to speak to an audience larger than even journalists might enjoy (…)
Van Gogh is said to have wished to see gaudily coloured prints of his paintings hanging in sailors’ pubs. Were he still alive, he would be making film posters.’
Walter Herzfeld, ‘Filmplakate’ in Die Weltbühne 25 (1929)

Van Gogh never got the appreciation he deserved during his lifetime. As far as the art world is considered, movie posters still share his fate. This exhibition is certainly a step in the right direction, so maybe there is some hope after all… 😉

Until March 3, 2024. Not to be missed.

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There are two things that I love more than anything else about being a movie poster dealer: First of all, for more than 25 years it has kept me from getting a job. Second, even after about 35 years in this hobby, I still frequently discover amazing posters I have never seen before. Like this one, that came in a few days ago:

This is an original release, country-of-origin Italian four-folio movie poster. It was printed in two sections and measures app. 55×79 in (140×200 cm).

L’APOCALISSE is a 1947 movie, the subtitle promises ‘A Ride through the Centuries’. The film apparently compares the debaucheries of the Roman Empire to the exaltations of Post-WWII Italy. If I understand the limited information I could find correctly, the basic message is that we should forfeit both sin and modern civilization, which is supposed to be more or less the same thing, and return to a simple and modest life in accordance with Christian rules and morals. Sounds like an interesting idea, but unfortunately this is another lost film. What a shame.

I’m not a believer in bold statements like ‘only known copy’ and such, but this is the first time I have seen this poster. In fact, I have only ever seen two other posters for this film, an Italian two-folio and a French Affiche from 1950. Both are no doubt extremely as well rare but also a tad underwhelming in my opinion.

This large Italian movie poster was created by the legendary poster artist Ercole Brini, and I find it absolutely striking. The structures in the top left apparently show a temple and the Colosseum of ancient Rome, while a post-WWII ruin is taking the right side. Both are connected by a girl who seems to have the fun of her lifetime. Or maybe it’s her last laugh, when we consider the two Horsemen of the Apocalypse right behind her.

A great design, and a worthwhile addition to any eschatological collection. Coming soon to the filmposter.net webshop.

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