Since we're checking out European poster art today, above is a nice West German promo for the classic wartime drama Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. We've covered just about all the nice promos for this film: Japanese, Spanish, Italian, and of course the classic U.S. version. Plus we wrote a post about the movie's brilliant set design. But this additional poster is worth sharing because it's the first time we've featured artist Hans Otto Wendt, a well regarded figure who worked during his youth as a draftsman in the newspaper industry, before taking his talents afield and collaborating with Deutsche London Film, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, and other major studios. He worked until 1969, at which point he retired due to poor health, and finally died in Berlin in 1979. For the above effort, note that he not only made Bergman the star of the poster, but the star of his handpainted lettering too. Casablanca premiered in West Germany today in 1952. 

We have another issue of Adam today, with a fun cover illustrating Ron Rawcliffe's story, “The Nine Strippers.” Obviously, with a title like that we had to read it, and it deals with a charter boat captain hired to take nine exotic entertainers upriver into the wilderness under mysterious circumstances, and it turns out they've been hired by an organized crime cabal. When the gathering is raided by federal police the captain must escape intact with bullets flying, strippers fleeing, and mafiosi trying to hijack his boat. Also in this issue of Adam you get fiction by Leonard Calhoun and John P. Gilders, plus a bit of boxing and a lot of models, including German born Israeli actress Helena Ronée just below, and French actress Catherine Rouvel in the feature "She Wins Them All." And circling back to the cover and its two potential castaways, look forward to this: we have another set of castaway cartoons coming up.

As much as we love K.G. Murray Publishing's men's magazine Adam, especially during its early 1970s period, we have to admit that the succinctly titled Man is probably the prettiest magazine ever produced by the Aussie company. Today's issue from this month in 1964 is an example. The colors explode from the pages. The art, some of which is by Jack Waugh and the single-monikered Humph, is detailed and lovingly rendered. The format is large (so much so that we had to scan every page you see here in two parts and assemble them in GIMP). And the stories are pure male wish fulfillment.

The magazine was such a popular offering that K.G. Murray even published a pocket edition, which we've already shown you. In today's full-sized edition, as always you get several beautiful models, including one supposedly named Van Leman posing on a sea turtle like it's a coin-operated ride outside a Kwik-E-Mart. We imagine the turtle wasn't happy about it, but how can you tell? It's a turtle. They never look happy. Man also provides a few celebrity shots, including of British actress Gloria Paul, and Danish flash-in-the pan Heidi Hansen. All that and more in many scans down under.

Once again we've chosen what we think is the best poster for a vintage film. In this case it's the urban drama Dead End with Humphrey Bogart, and the poster is one painted by Jean Mascii for the French release as La rue sans issue. Bogart features prominently in both the art and film, but the rest of cast includes Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Claire Trevor, and Wendy Barrie. We're talking good, solid actors—two of them future Academy Award winners—and they make Dead End an excellent movie. In addition it was based on a play by Sidney Kingsley, with the script penned by Lillian Hellman, more top talent. Kingsley had already won a Pulitzer Prize, and Hellman had written many hit plays.