eMoviePoster.com

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

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (sometimes called "Treasure of Sierra Madre"), the classic 1948 John Huston (winner of the Best Director Academy Award for this film) gold mining melodrama ("They sold their souls for ....The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"; "Warner Bros. hit a new high in high adventure... Bringing another great best-seller to the screen!"; "The nearer they get to their treasure the farther they get from the law!"; "Based on the Novel by B. Traven"; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; about three men who prospect for gold and the mixed blessings they find when they discover much gold) starring Humphrey Bogart (as Fred C. Dobbs), Walter Huston (winner of the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for this film), Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Barton MacLane, Alfonso Bedoya (as Gold Hat), John Huston (the director, as the man who gives Bogart money three times), and Robert 'Bobby' Blake. Note that the author of the book this classic movie was based on was written by a VERY unusual man known as "B. Traven", and you might want to research him, because it is amazing that no one has made a book about his life! Also note that Tim Holt's father appeared in a tiny cameo role in the "flop house" scene, as a fun favor to his son. Also note that there is an urban legend that Ann Sheridan plays the hooker who Humphrey Bogart sees after he gets cleaned up. Actually, that is not Ann Sheridan in the film, but she DID get made up for that scene, and there are still photos of her, so it is almost true!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info: Note that this is a "studio-issued" negative. What is it? It was produced by the studio but is not the camera original. It is very high quality and was created in quantity by the studios and sent to media outlets or other places that had need of the very highest quality image for reproduction purposes (in newspapers, magazines, or elsewhere). We have put a scan of the negative that shows the "positive image" (in addition to an image of the negative image). 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). The negative is in a plastic sleeve (but we removed it and scanned it, so that bidders could see just how high quality it is). It will be sent to the winner of the auction in its sleeve.

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!

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