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Auction History Result

2s0285 CITIZEN KANE camera original 8x10 negative 1941 c/u of youthful director/star Orson Welles!

Date Sold 8/7/2022
Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price.


A Photographic Negative (measures 8" x 10" [20 x 25 cm]) (Learn More)

Citizen Kane, the classic 1941 Orson Welles (nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for this film) biographical newspaper journalism melodrama ("Some called him a hero... Others called him a heel"; "It's Terrific!"; loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; many people consider it the finest movie ever made) starring Orson Welles (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film; in the title role as Charles Foster Kane), with the members of Welles' "Mercury Actors", who had previously acted with him on stage, Joseph Cotten (as Jedediah Leland), Dorothy Comingore (as Susan Alexander Kane), Everett Sloane (as Mr. Bernstein), Ray Collins (as Jim W. Gettys), George Coulouris (as Walter Parks Thatcher), Agnes Moorehead (as Mary Kane, Kane's mother), Paul Stewart (as Raymond), Ruth Warrick (as Emily Monroe Norton Kane), Erskine Sanford (as Herbert Carter), William Alland (as Jerry Thompson), Fortunio Bonanova (as Signor Matiste), Buddy Swan (as Kane at age 8), Harry Shannon (as Kane's father), and Alan Ladd (in one of his early incredibly tiny parts, but he does have a single speaking line!)
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.
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!

Condition: good to very good. There is retouching on the emulsion side, typical of many (but not all) camera original negatives (see above). There are some smudges and scuffs on both sides of the negative, including one entering the right of Welles' jaw and cheek.
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