1974 Rick Griffin Five Summer Stories Handbill

Artist Rick Griffin's association with the Grateful Dead is well known and documented, as he created some of the bands most memorable album covers and posters. However, long before that connection was made, Griffin's early days were spent exploring his love of surfing. One of his first art projects was his surfing comic strip, "Murphy" for Surfer magazine in 1961, with Griffin's character featured on the front cover the following year. For the next 2 decades, the artist would often return to surfer related graphics within his large body of work. This Surf Movie handbill from the mid 1970s exhibit the artist's continued passion for the subject.

FIVE SUMMER STORIES - Final Screenings at Southern CA locations Spring 1974. First Printing Movie Handbill / Flyer printed on thin, slick paper stock - 4 7/8" x 8" - Five Summer Stories is a leading contender for the most famous Surf movie out there! Heralded as the finest surf movie ever made, Five Summer Stories is a cultural icon, a time capsule from a watershed era when the world was at a critical crossroads and its reflection was clear in the emerging sport/art of surfing.

Against a backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Nixon years, Five Summer Stories was the culmination of the joint surf-film careers of Jim Freeman and Greg MacGillivray. Code name The Last Surfing Movie during production, the movie portrays a young, outlaw sport at a strategic point in its creative evolution.

--CRITICAL DETAILS--
--TITLE: Rick Griffin Five Summer Stories
--GRADE: MINT 95
--DATE: 04/24/74
--DIMENSIONS: 8 in. x 4.88 in.
--PRINTING: OHB-A; Handbill