CHARMANTS GARCONS 1957 Zizi Jeanmaire PETER STRAUSFELD UK ACADEMY QUAD POSTER

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1957 Henri Decoin Comedy CHARMANTS GARCONS starring Zizi Jeanmaire, Daniel Gélin, Henri Vidal, François Périer, Jacques Dacqmine, Marie Daems, Gil Vidal, Jacques Berthier, Gert Froebe and Madeleine Lambert.

Real-life singer Zizi Jeanmaire plays a successful night-club singer who attracts several male admirers.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it's closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500.

The poster, printed by the Westminster Press, is in very good unfolded (rolled) condition.