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Wings, the 1927 William A. Wellman silent/talking World War I (WWI) military airplane aviation romantic thriller melodrama ("To those young warriors of the sky whose wings are folded about them forever in this motion picture is reverently dedicated."; "Story by John Monk Saunders"; winner of the Best Picture Academy Award) starring Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen, Arlette Marchal, Gary Cooper (in one of his first major roles!), Jobyna Ralston, El Brendel, Richard Tucker, and Roscoe Karns. Note that Arlette Marchal was a French actress who had some success in American silent films. She was fourth billed when this movie was first released in 1927, but likely she had great trouble speaking English, because when the movie had dialogue added in 1929, she was no longer billed at all! Also note that Clara Bow was the most famous "flapper girl" of the mid to late 1920s (she became known as "The It Girl" after the character she played based on the popular novel by Elinor Glyn). She had a major role in Wings, and was Paramount's biggest star at that time. But she had a notorious private life and seemingly "settled down" when she married cowboy star Rex Bell in 1931 (she had two children and she retired from movies), but sadly in 1949 she went into a mental institution after a failed suicide attempt (she had had psychiatric issues for quite some time) and she was released but never returned to her family, and lived alone until her death in 1965.
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!

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