Famous movie star photo collection set to be auctioned off

Описание: (30 Jul 2012) STORYLINE:
After nearly three quarters of a century of selling movie and "pin-up" images, legendary New York business Movie Star News is closing down and selling off most of its vast collection.
Over 73 years the store amassed a staggering number of film stills, posters and negatives, nearly 3 (m) million of them, including 1,500 images and negatives of Bettie Page, known as "the queen of pin-ups".
Last week, the once-lively shop in Lower Manhattan was lifeless.
The classic movie posters that once covered its narrow 2,000-square-foot (60 metres) space were rolled up or covered in cellophane, its bins and racks were empty.
Everything was packed up in cardboard boxes that littered the floor.
The legendary Manhattan store has sold its entire inventory to a Las Vegas collectibles company, which plans to auction it off in a series of sales slated to begin next year.
Movie Star News produced glossy prints from the negatives, selling each for a few dollars, in the store and via the post.
"The big thing that I thought made us special was that we also had the know-how to find these things, there were no Googles," said Ira Kramer, who ran the store that his mother, Paula, opened with his uncle, Irving Klaw, in 1939.
But digital photography and the Internet have significantly cut down on demand.
"We would do the research. It was physically going through everything, climbing ladders and find them. And now you type search engine get me this and what do you need me for?" said Kramer.
Kramer said it was more lucrative to rent out the store space in the building, which he owns, than to continue as a merchant.
The bulk of the collection covers the years 1939 to 1979; 11,500 movies and 5,000 actors are represented.
There are thousands of original negatives of movie stars from Robert Redford to Steve McQueen, and hundreds of movie images of "The Godfather" and "Gone With the Wind."
About half of the images are vintage prints made around the time of the films.
Guernsey's auction house is going to sell the memorabilia on behalf of the collectibles company.
Arlan Ettinger of Guernsey's said he remembers going to Movie Star News as a child growing up in New York's Lower East Side.
"When I was invited to see a movie collection to compete against other auction houses, I didn't know it was Movie Star News. It was described to me as a big collection of photography relating to the movies. When I walked into this building and realised it was a continuation of the very operation that I had remembered that had influenced me as a boy, I had goose bumps," said Ettinger.
As far back as the 1940s, Movie Star News had a mailing list of 100,000 names.
World War II soldiers were big customers, buying prints for their lockers, Kramer said.
The entrepreneurial Klaw, who died in 1966, hit on the idea of selling pictures of Hollywood stars while operating a movie bookstore.
Then someone came to Klaw and asked if he could produce a new kind of photo - The Pin-up.
Kramer's mother was the one who took the pin-up shots.
But it was Klaw who launched that side of the business after a man approached him about making him a set of photographs of skimpily-clad girls posing with whips and ropes, said Kramer.
Betty Page was Klaw's favourite model, and a suitcase of the 7-inch (17.7 cm) heels she wore in the photos, plus other photograph props, will be included in the auction.
The photos were tame by today's standards.
In fact, the models were required to wear two pairs of knickers.
Kramer said that Klaw finally decided to burn all the pin-up material, but Paula Klaw saved a lot of it.


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