Stars come out March 13 for Hollywood’s Golden Era in Photography sale

NEW YORK – Jasper52 will present an encore of the Golden Age of Hollywood – both on and off the silver screen – in an online auction of photo enlargements of the stars on Wednesday, March 13. Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are just a few of the iconic faces in this sale. Absentee and Internet live bidding is available exclusively through LiveAuctioneers.

No less than 10 images of actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) are offered in the auction. A five-time Oscar nominee, Hepburn was awarded the 1954 Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Roman Holiday. She was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend in the Golden Age Hollywood. Bud Fraker’s 11-by14-inch silver gelatin print pictures Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, filmed in 1961. The photograph, which has a $700-$800 estimate, is estate stamped and printed from the original negative.

Jayne Mansfield was never nominated for an Academy Award, but the voluptuous blonde turned many heads, including Sophia Loren’s. The actresses were dining at Romanoff’s, a popular restaurant in the 1940s and ’50s, when photographer Joe Shere snapped this revealing picture in 1957. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Shere worked as darkroom printer and apprentice photographer. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and became the Chief of Photo Division. After the war he went to Hollywood and was a photographer for various publications. In 1936 his brother, Sam Shere, shot the prize-winning Hindenburg disaster photograph.

Many of the images in the Jasper52 auction were created by photographer Sid Avery including a picture of a young Marlon Brando relaxing in his Beverly Glen home in Los Angeles in 1953.

Another candid Avery shot is of singer and actor Dean Martin in his dressing room, “ostentatiously avoiding temptation,” in Hollywood in 1961.

The camera loved Marilyn Monroe, as evidenced by the dozen of her photographs in the auction. On is an AP photo by Roger Marshutz taken during an interview at her home in 1959.

Several Sid Avery images of James Dean are included in the auction. Avery wrote about photographing the young actor from Indiana on the set of Rebel Without a Cause in 1955: “People told me before I went to see him at Griffith Park Observatory that he had almost all the photographers kicked off the set. When I went there, I had just bought a new camera called the Hasselblad with a 250mm lens (which made it look impressive). So I stood way back and I only made a couple of snapshots of him when he wasn’t really working – he was relaxing. He got curious about the camera and he came over. I gave him a lesson on how to focus and shoot the camera. From thereon, any place that I went, when he saw me and he wasn’t actually filming, he would give me all kinds of wonderful photos.”

Hollywood’s Golden Era in Photography auction will be held Wednesday, March 13, beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern time.