eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Jean Simmons was born in London, England in 1929. When she was just 14 she got her first movie role and after some minor parts over the next two years she was Young Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations, and that led to much bigger and better roles. The next year she was in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus, the following year she was Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this film), and the following year she was the girl stranded on a desert island in The Blue Lagoon. She was under contract to Rank, but they sold her contract to eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in 1950, and she also then married actor Stewart Granger, who was 16 years older than her, and had appeared in Caesar and Cleopatra with her when she was just 16, and again in Adam and Evelyne when she was 20 (which oddly enough, was a movie about a man in his thirties who falls in love with a teenager). Hughes really had no clue what to do with her, but she did make the excellent film noir Angel Face, directed by Otto Preminger. But her other roles for Hughes were so lackluster that she sued to be let out of her contract and won, and remained independent the rest of her career, so she could never again be forced to make a lesser movie. In the later 1950s she appeared in many major Hollywood productions, but the two that stand out the most for me are as Sergeant Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, and as Julie Maragon in The Big Country. In 1960 she was at the top of her stardom, but husband's Stewart Granger's career was on the skids, and they divorced, and she immediately re-married director Richard Brooks (who was 17 years her senior) and she starred in his adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, as Sister Sharon Falconer, and that same year she starred opposite Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, and also found time to co-star in Stanley Donen's romantic comedy The Grass Is Greener! That was the peak of her career, but she continued acting for decades in films such as Happy Ending (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), before passing away on January 22, 2010, just shy of her 81st birthday.

Important Added Info: Note that this is a negative that was in the camera when the photographer shot the photo. We have taken a scan of the negative as it appears, and also a special scan of the negative that shows the "positive image". We will provide the winning bidder of this auction with that positive image scan. 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. Many smaller format camera original negatives do not have retouching on them or numbers due to their smaller size. 8x10, 5x7 and 4x5 negatives were primarily the sizes used in the 1920s through the 1940s. 2 1/4" Rollei negatives and 35mm negatives became an industry standard in the 1950s and beyond until the digital revolution in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

This is a very special auction of 710 extremely rare negatives and transparencies of various sizes, plus lots of sets of 35mm slides. EVERY single one in this auction is either "studio issued" (meaning it was created by the studio and sent to theaters and movie outlets), OR it is a "camera original" (meaning it was the actual negative that was in the camera when the photographer took the picture). Every auction clearly identifies which they are, and there are no items being auctioned that are not either "studio issue" or "camera originals". We have divided them by type and size.

Also note that this auction is for one or more negatives, and every one of the 185 auctions of negatives we are currently running have been scanned expertly. This auction contains the scan(s) of the negatives in this auction, and they have been scanned so that you see a "positive" image (and we have added an "eMoviePoster.com" watermark over it), but the auction is for the actual negative. The winner of this auction and ONLY the winner of this auction will, upon request, be sent the UNWATERMARKED scan(s) of the negative(s) in this auction, which will both save them the time and expense of scanning them themselves, and also allow them to make positive prints of the items they purchased, if they desire.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775