We are honored to be your one-stop, 5-star source for vintage pin up, pulp magazines, original illustration art, decorative collectibles and ephemera with a wide and always changed assortment of antique and vintage items from the Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern eras. All items are 100% guaranteed to be original, vintage, and as described. All sell no reserve! ITEM: A 1939 vintage & original, large format, Hollywood Regency photograph of Greta Garbo from a studio sitting with her favorite photographer and longtime friend, Clarence Sinclair Bull. A mysterious and glamorously dramatic image showcases Garbo’s enigmatic beauty. From the portrait sitting done in promotion of “Ninotchka” (1939). This image was published in the October, 1939 issue of Silver Screen Magazine and accompanied an article by Ed Sullivan titled, When Greta Isn’t Garbo. This is a classically stunning view and exceptional Golden Age image of Garbo. Typed press snipe on verso reads: THE NEW GARBO… Ultra-modern, and wearing a special version of her famous’long bob,’ Greta Garbo went into her first picture in two years at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, playing the title role in’Ninotchka,’ sophisticated romantic comedy of Paris, Moscow and Constantinople, directed by the whimsical Ernst Lubitsch. Melvyn Douglas plays her leading man for the second time having appeared with her in’As You Desire Me. ” Measures 10″ x 13 with margins on a glossy double weight paper stock. Photographer’s ink stamp; Silver Screen ink stamp; Culver Service stamps/stickers; and handwritten notations on verso. Below is the image as it appeared in the October, 1939 issue of Silver Screen Magazine. Please note: this is being included for informational purposes only and is not included in the sale. Please use the included images as a conditional guide. Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and go to work in a department store. The store used her as a model in its newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in short advertising film at that same department store while she was still a teenager. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film and gave her a small part in his Luffar-Petter (1922). Encouraged by her own performance, she applied for and won a scholarship to a Swedish drama school. While there she appeared in at least one film, En lyckoriddare (1921). Both were small parts, but it was a start. Finally famed Swedish director Mauritz Stiller pulled her from the drama school for the lead role in Gösta Berlings saga (1924). At 18 Greta was on a roll. Following The Joyless Street (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM, and her first film for the studio was the American-made Torrent (1926), a silent film in which she didn’t have to speak a word of English. After a few more films, including The Temptress (1926), Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1928), Greta starred in Anna Christie (1930) (her first “talkie”), which not only gave her a powerful screen presence but also garnered her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress (she didn’t win). Later that year she filmed Romance (1930), which was somewhat of a letdown, but she bounced back, eventually landing another lead role in Mata Hari (1931), which turned out to be a hit. Greta continued to give intense performances in whatever was handed her. The next year she was cast in what turned out to be yet another hit, Grand Hotel (1932). However, it was in MGM’s Anna Karenina (1935) that she gave what some consider the performance of her life. She was absolutely breathtaking in the role as a woman torn between two lovers and her son. She later starred in Ninotchka (1939), which showcased her comedic side. It wasn’t until two years later she made what was to be her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. After World War II Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera. She would work for the rest of her life to perpetuate the Garbo mystique. Her films, she felt, had their proper place in history and would gain in value. She abandoned Hollywood and moved to New York City. She would jet-set with some of the world’s best-known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis and others. She spent time gardening and raising flowers and vegetables. In 1954 Greta was given a special Oscar for past unforgettable performances. She even penned her biography in 1990. On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with her went the “Garbo Mystique”. IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson What is there to say about the legendary Hollywood photographer Clarence Sinclair Bull that has not already been said? One of the most well known and–along with George Hurrell–one said to have helped invent the modern idea of Hollywood Glamour in photography. Bull was born in Sun River, Montana (some sources say he was born in Michigan) in 1896. For a time he studied with the great Western painter Charles Marion Russell. But his real interest lie in photography. He went to Hollywood in 1918 and became an assistant cameraman for Metro Pictures. During breaks from film production, he began taking photographs of the various stars of the time. In 1924, when Metro Pictures became Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Bull became head of MGM stills department. He remained with the studio until the end of his career. Bull was very well accomplished in everything to do with his specialty from lighting to printing and retouching. He photographed many of the first-rate stars of the day including Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Leslie Howard, Katherine Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Hedy Lamarr, Vivian Leigh, Spencer Tracy, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Jean Harlow, John Gilbert, among many others. Of course, he is extremely well known for his numerous photographs of Greta Garbo. Katherine Hepburn said of Bull: One of the greats. And the National Portrait Gallery! From the book,’Glamour of the Gods: Clarence Sinclair Bull’s long association as a photographer with the studio that would become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began when producer Samuel Goldwyn hired him in 1919. Managing to survive the commotion of the consolidation of Hollywood in the early and mid-1920s, Bull found himself at the helm of MGM’s stills department when the studio was formed in 1924, and stayed there until retiring in 1961. The enormity of MGM’s output of films in the 1920s–they advertised a new feature every week–saw Bull’s domain grow. He was responsible for managing MGM’s staff of photographers and the large support crew of technicians needed to develop, re-touch, print and collate the hundreds of thousands of prints distributed annually by MGM’s publicity department. At least one photograph from the 1920s shows Bull with twelve stills-men who juggled the task of shooting photos on as many as a dozen films that might be concurrently in production. At MGM, like the other studios, these men–and it was an almost exclusively male profession–worked six days a week and often long hours each day. Generally one photographer was assigned to a production and, as filming was underway, he would document each scene using an 8 x 10 view camera. These cameras not only had lenses with sharp resolution, but contact prints could be made from the negatives quickly and in enormous quantities. The stills made for each film were numbered sequentially and gathered together for a book. Stills photographers also created the images used for poster art, lobby cards and other forms of advertising conceived by imaginative publicity chiefs and their staffs. In later years, the famous documenter of all things Hollywood, John Kobal inherited the extensive work of Bull after he became good friends with Bull and his wife, Jeanne. So many of what is now known as the Kobal Collection contains Bull’s work. Chances are, if you have seen a portrait of Garbo other than Edward Steichen’s iconic image, it is the work of Bull. With the exception of one session, Bull and the reclusive actress worked together exclusively in the portrait studio from 1929 to 1941 and their collaboration resulted in a body of imagery unmatched in Hollywood photography. Reminiscing with Kobal, Bull spoke of Garbo’s extraordinary concentration and described her working methods as’businesslike. She was’his easiest subject,’ surprising given Garbo’s status as the studio’s biggest star. Garbo was one of Kobal’s favorites, and he took care to understand her sittings with Bull to produce a limited-edition portfolio of five Garbo photographs printed under Bull’s supervision from his original negatives. Bull died in 1979, just as the first portfolios were prepared. It seems that every star who worked at MGM was photographed by Bull at least once. Paramount’s biggest male attraction, Gary Cooper, was loaned to MGM in 1934 to co-star with Marion Davies in Operator 32 (1934). Bull and Cooper had a short session together on 17 of April 1934 and the results were splendid. He infused Cooper with a sleek, polished glamour that was as unusual for male subjects as was the cigarette dangling from his lips. Old timers and newcomers all had the chance to work with Bull, including vaudeville alumna Marie Dressler, who for a short time in the early 1930s was Hollywood’s number one draw, and the ingenue Lana Turner, who at twenty was co-starring with Clark Gable in Honky Tonk. Bull started experimenting with color photography in the late 1930s, making color exposure of Garbo first in 1936 and again in 1941. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s he worked extensively in color recording, among others, Elizabeth Taylor at the moment she was being considered for adult roles. Bull presided over a team of talented stills photographers, some of whom occasionally made portraits, generally on the set including the great Bert Longworth (see his own post). Longworth took stills for Garbo’s first three pictures and his images of Garbo and John Gilbert in a clinch for’Flesh and the Devil’ (1926) are the quintessence of old-time movie romance. He left MGM in 1927 to work for Warner Brothers. Bull’s photographs are highly collectible and can be worth in the thousands of dollars. In addition, Bull’s photographs are seen in retrospective photography galleries worldwide. Biography From: VintageMovieStarPhotos (dot) blogspot (dot) com. The item “Mysterious Greta Garbo Large Vintage 1939 CS Bull Close Up Photograph Ninotchka” is in sale since Sunday, April 03, 2016. This item is in the category “Entertainment Memorabilia\Movie Memorabilia\Photographs\Pre-1940\Black & White”. The seller is “grapefruitmoongallery” and is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This item can be shipped worldwide.

• Size: 10″ x 13″
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States