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Ann Miller was born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier in Chireno, Texas in 1923. Her father had wanted a boy badly, and she got stuck with "Johnnie" as her first name, but she was called Annie. She had rickets as a child, and started dancing to strengthen her legs. Her mother left her father and took her to California when she was 13, and because her mom could not keep a job for very long, Ann had to support them, which she did working as a dancer in the "Black Cat Club" in San Francisco (she had matured early, and told them she was 18!). She was signed by RKO when she was 14 (they too believed she was 18), and she appeared as a dancer in 10 movies from 1937 to 1940, working her way up to playing the third lead in some of them. In 1941, she moved to Columbia and was in 12 movies through 1946. In 1948, she moved to MGM, and big budget musicals were all the rage there, and then found room for Ann to tap dance in most of them. As many of us suspected, she could not really tap 500 times per minute, as the studio claimed (she actually would perform in regular shoes, and then they would add in the sound of the taps!). But she WAS an incredible dancer (on a par with Eleanor Powell), and she had the most amazing legs, and if you look at the movie poster for any movie she appeared in from the 1930s to 1950s they almost always prominently show her legs on the poster! When musicals declined, Ann hung up her tap shoes and retired from movies in 1956. She starred on Broadway in the musical "Mame" in 1969, where they added a tap dancing number just for her (she had lost none of her ability, even though she had been dancing professionally for over 30 years!). The following year, master commercial writer Stan Freberg wrote a commercial for Heinz Great American Soups where housewife Miller is asked by her husband "What's for dinner?" and she rips off her dress to reveal a sequinned outfit, and she tap dances on a giant soup can, and at the end he says, "Why do you have to make such a big production out of everything?"! In 1979, Miller returned to Broadway in Sugar Babies (with Mickey Rooney) and once again amazed audiences with her tap dancing! She stayed with the very successful show for nine years as it toured the country. She continued performing until the late 1990s, and she passed in 2004, at the age of 80.

Important Added Info: Note that this is a negative that was in the camera when the photographer shot the photo (see below for more on this). We have put a scan of the negative that shows the "positive image" (in addition to a photo of the negative image, so you can better see its condition). REMEMBER THAT WHAT YOU RECEIVE WILL BE A PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVE, NOT A POSITIVE IMAGE LIKE YOU ARE SEEING (however, the archive that owned this made an 8x10 positive print from it that will be included with the negative). However, we will provide the winning bidder of this auction that positive image scan that is both high quality and not watermarked (on request to the winning bidder, and only the winning bidder). We scanned it, so that bidders could see just how high quality it is. What are camera original negatives? These often (but not always) have retouching on the emulsion side, and negative numbers written in India ink on the front. Depending on the studio some 8x10 negatives may be trimmed or have numbers or information embedded into the sides of the negative. Obviously, camera original negatives are far more rare (and far more desirable) than studio-issued ones, but both are very high quality, and both can be used to make extremely high resolution positive prints of the image.

Note that this negative (and 96 others we are currently auctioning, in 97 separate auctions) has a wonderful provenance! From 1938 through the 1960s, movie fans would purchase photos of their favorite movie stars from a company in Brooklyn, New York, called "Movie Star News". This company, owned by Irving Klaw, sold a massive number of repro photos, because it became widely known to have some of the highest quality movie star images there were, as good or better than what the studios themselves produced. It turns out that Klaw had obtained the negatives that he made his photos from directly from the major studios, who apparently did not want to store negatives due to the fear of them being a fire hazard. He amassed an unmatched collection of over 20,000 negatives of all the top Hollywood stars, and over half of them were "camera originals", meaning they were the ones in the camera when the photographer took the image, and were hand retouched by the photographer (if retouching was necessary).

Irving Klaw died in 1966, and his nephew continued his business for many years, but he closed the business in 2012, and the archive of negatives passed through several hands before being acquired by a company that hired a professional archivist to spend over a year cataloging the negatives. The 97 negatives we are currently auctioning are from this amazing archive, and approximately half of them are camera originals, and half are "studio negatives" (created by the studio directly from the camera original). See above for which type of negative the one in this auction is. These include wonderful images of top Hollywood stars! This is an amazing opportunity to not only purchase ultra rare negatives, but also to obtain ones from one of the most legendary archives ever assembled!

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