#(17) DER BLAUE ENGEL

First printing of 190 copies of which 25 are signed.

1972 Four colors 16-3/4" x 24"

Client: Tom Luddy, The Pacific Film Archive, 2625 Durant Avenue, University of California Art Museum, Berkeley CA 94720. Telephone (510) 642-1413 All signed copies to The Poster, San Francisco

(Print: Poster USA 73; The Modern American Poster, MOMA, 1983)

Second printing 450 copies of which an indeterminate number, less than 200, was signed. 1973 Four colors 16-3/4" x 24" All signed copies to The Poster, San Francisco

1973 Four colors 16-3/4" x 24"

The theme is light and heavy. Here Emil Jannings' egg is balanced precariously on Marlene Deitrich's unforgiving anvil. What is going to happen to that egg? Whatever it is, it won't be good for Janning's lacerated spirit, while the innocent catalyst of his destruction will scarcely feel a thing. He brought it on himself, you might say, and there's no fool like an old fool. But if we were each of us punished in proportion to our mistakes, especially those of the heart, there'd be no room to spare in Purgatory. They'd have to cut loose the real bad actors to make space, and even then we'd be stacked like cordwood and spill into the less savory antechambers of Hell. So, when the sober citizen goes schoolboy-lovesick over a nightclub nightingale, runs off the rails and loses everything-reputation, worldly goods, self-esteem and all-consider that naughty Cupid could have done the same for you. And might yet.