eMoviePoster.com

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

Burt Lancaster was born in 1913, and was one of the last great "superstars". Yet his first released movie (The Killers) wasn't in theaters until he was 32, after working in a circus for years, and being in WWII. There has never been another actor like him, before or since! After a series of prison, crime, and swashbuckler movies (where he removed his shirt and showed his physical prowess often) he started taking "offbeat" roles (like in Mister 880, Come Back Little Sheba and The Rose Tattoo) and then, as his star grew and he had the clout to do so, he began taking more and more "different" roles, like in Sweet Smell of Success, Judgment at Nuremberg, Birdman Of Alcatraz (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), A Child Is Waiting, The Leopard, Seven Days in May, The Swimmer, Elmer Gantry (winner of the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) and others, and if you haven't seen any of the above, I highly recommend them all! Of course he was also great in most of his "commercial" movies like Trapeze, Brute Force, From Here To Eternity (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Lawman, and many others! At 64 he played the lead in Go Tell the Spartans, a great anti-Vietnam War movie, and two years later he was a credible male romantic lead (at 66) in Atlantic City (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film). Two of his best supporting roles came at the end of his career, in Local Hero and in Field of Dreams. He is well remembered for his odd clipped speech (loved by impressionists) and for his supposed great friendship with Kirk Douglas, with whom he made 7 films (but he said, "Kirk would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second"! He seemed so much larger than life, and a giant of a man, but he was 6'1". He passed away in 1994 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!

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