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: This is a vintage and original 1930s large format, fine art glamour photograph by Clarence Sinclair Bull of iconic Hollywood beauty Marion Davies, from her collection. A sensational example of art deco portraiture, Bull employed a masterful use of lighting and a keen eye for composition when capturing the incomparable beauty and glamour of Davies. Just a remarkable piece of old Hollywood memorabilia that would be a treasured addition for any collector. Measures 10″ x 13″ on a matte double weight paper stock. Bull’s M-G-M ink stamp to verso. Remnants of old paper and adhesive to verso from when this photograph was removed from a scrapbook. Please use the included images as a conditional guide. Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897. She had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly well. Once her formal education had ended, Marion began her career as a chorus girl in New York City and eventually found herself in the famed Ziegfeld Follies. But she wanted more than to dance. Acting, to Marion, was the epitome of show business and aimed her sights in that direction. Her first film was Runaway, Romany (1917) when she was 20. Written by Marion and directed by her brother-in-law, the film wasn’t exactly a box-office smash, but for Marion, it was a start and a stepping stone to bigger things. The following year Marion starred in three films, The Burden of Proof (1918), [error], and Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918). The latter film was backed by newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, with whom Marion would continue a long-term romantic relationship for the next 30 years. Because of Hearst’s newspaper empire, Marion would be promoted as no actress before her. She appeared in numerous films over the next few years, with The Cinema Murder (1919) being one of the most suspenseful. In 1922, Marion appeared as Mary Tudor in the historical romantic epic, When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). It was a film into which Hearst poured in millions of dollars as a showcase for her. Although Marion didn’t normally appear in period pieces, she turned in a wonderful performance and the film turned a profit. Marion remained busy, one of the staples in movie houses around the country. At the end of the twenties, it was obvious that sound films were about to replace the silents. Marion was nervous because she had a stutter when she became excited and worried she wouldn’t make a successful transition to the new medium, but she was a true professional who had no problem with the change. Time after time, film after film, Marion turned in masterful performances. In 1930, two of her better films were Not So Dumb (1930) and The Florodora Girl (1930). By the early 30s, Marion had lost her box office appeal and the downward slide began. Had she been without Hearst’s backing, she possibly could have been more successful. He was more of a hindrance than a help. Hearst had tried to push MGM executives to hire Marion for the role of Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). Mayer had other ideas and hired producer Irving Thalberg’s wife, Norma Shearer instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM without much impact. Without her the Hearst Corporation might not be where it is today. Hearst’s financial problems also spelled the end to her career. Although she had made the transition to sound, other stars fared better and her roles became fewer and further between. In 1937, a 40 year old Marion filmed her last movie, Ever Since Eve (1937). Out of films and with the intense pressures of her relationship with Hearst, Marion turned to more and more to alcohol. Despite those problems, Marion was a very sharp and savvy business woman. After the death of Hearst in 1951, Marion married for the first time at the age of 54, to Horace Brown. The union would last until she died of cancer on September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. She was 64 years old. 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 “1930s Fine Art Deco Large Vintage C. S. Bull Photograph Marion Davies Glamour” is in sale since Sunday, May 01, 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