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What do you want to know: In the 20th century, it was common for film studios to incinerate their original negatives because storing the film presented a fire hazard. Founded in Brooklyn in 1938, Movie Star News (MSN) – a mail-order company specializing in the sale of Hollywood images – began acquiring these camera negatives, eventually amassing a collection of more than 10,000 images of some of the most famous films and movies of the century. stars. MSN shut down in 2012 and its inventory was largely ignored until 2021 when a huge cataloging effort began which revealed that MSN was, in fact, the most comprehensive studio archive in existence. Many negatives are in pristine condition, having been carefully preserved from the day they were acquired. Globe Pictures has worked to preserve and offer collectors some of culture’s most iconic photos since 1938. The company now presents a collection of some of MSN’s most famous images in 1/1 editions of large format archival prints accompanied by the original large format (10 inch by 8 inch) negatives in backlit LED frames, and filled with a non-exchangeable Certificate of Authenticity.
Why we love it: Many original materials from classic cinema were thought to have been lost to history, but this massive archive sheds light on both well-known and more obscure movies and images from historically significant 20th-century films, ranging from the original King Kong to the 1960s classic Easy Rider. Images of movie stars like Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic pieces of cultural history, and Globe Photos offers film and art collectors the opportunity to own both a limited-edition print of these famous faces and others in the roles they played as well as a real piece of Hollywood history through the framed display of the original large format negatives. Through these archives, rarer photos too, such as those of the Italian actor Rudolph Valentino, allow collectors to own one of the first images of the silent age of Hollywood. With a sizable selection of highlights from the Golden Age and New Hollywood, Globe Photos offers the opportunity to gain insight into bygone cinematic eras and include key moments from the silver screen in a personal collection.
According to Globe Photo: “Movie Star News [MSN] is the grand esplanade of the Film Culture Archive, the Black Horse, an oasis among flattened seas of sand where movie studios once stood intact, but are now scattered and absorbed like orphans in a storm. For decades, it was assumed that MSN was mostly made up of second-hand artifacts, duplicate camera negatives, and unwanted discarded material from major studios. However, as it is reassembled in the studio’s original production code sequence, it is clear that the archive is not a bad derivation of the studio archive as it once existed, but the intact studio archives themselves, original and well preserved.
Here are more images available via Globe Photos.
Always from The wild (1953) with Marlon Brando. From the RKO archives. Courtesy of Globe Entertainment & Media, Corp.
Negative again The wild (1953) with Marlon Brando. From the RKO archives. Courtesy of Globe Entertainment & Media, Corp.
Always from Easy Rider (1969). From the RKO archives. Courtesy of Globe Entertainment & Media, Corp.
Portrait of Marilyn Monroe, ca. 1952; from the RKO archives. Courtesy of Globe Entertainment & Media, Corp.
Always from Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) starring Rudolph Valentino. From the RKO archives. Courtesy of Globe Entertainment & Media, Corp.
Browse thousands of vintage images and photos with Globe Pictures.
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