This archive of Cinema history is also the collective memories of HOLLYWOOD. The gunmen, the gallants and the ghosts, the bit players and the STARS. It has been assembled over period of forty years by a director learning his craft. In his early. days great directors, Wilder, Lean, and Welles, amongst many others took him to one side and said. “Study the stills son. They won’t move so much, so you can’t miss too much.”.

Forty years on the archive, as we now call it, has grown to approximately 100,000 pieces. Keep coming back as we shall continue to amaze you with the stunning work of these early photographers and their successors. Naturally, you can purchase any item in the archive, at very realistic prices, often 10% of the auction sales price. Printed on genuine photographic paper, either Kodak of Fuji, they are true to their original composition even the sometimes odd colors. So browse though the first few pages of Yesteryear and then tackle the more in depth sections.

The archive has over 30,000 images and is growing weekly. Check back often to see what's new. We have recently added new categories for Drama, War Movies, The Wizard of Oz and Tarzan. We have also added to our collections of Chaplin, Film Noir and Posters. See below for more information on our special 100th anniversary celebration of the Ziegfeld Follies.

An advanced technique for developing and processing negatives prior to printing. Developed by French publishers during the eighteenth century, Girclee was used to refine plates prior to screening very large prints for the Chateuax and palaces of the Aristocracy. Often their ceilings and walls where mapped with these prints as a guide to the frescos of Cathedrals as well as Palaces.

Wolf Tracer Studios refined similar methods to refine the scanning of very large, up to 100' x100' inches, and again reducing them for website thumbnails. The resultant 80 - 100 meg files may be then, faithfully, reprinted on heavy weight canvass.

An archive client can appreciate a copy of "The Bride Of Frankenstein" poster in its full 47 x 84 inch splendor for considerably less than the $334,000 the original fetched at auction. Provided, of course that he or she does not have to build the required walls.

  Enter the Archive and take a look at our new category - "Full Size Posters". Enjoy a sampling of posters from over a century of cinema history.

The Follies were lavish revues, something between later Broadway shows and a more elaborate high class Vaudeville variety show. Many of the top entertainers of the era (including Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Ann Pennington (Ziegfeld star)|Ann Pennington, Bert Williams, Will Rogers, Ruth Etting, Helen Morgan, Marilyn Miller, W.C. Fields, Ed Wynn, Gilda Gray, Nora Bayes, The Tiller Girls, and others) appeared in the shows.

The Ziegfeld Follies were also famous for many beautiful chorus girls commonly known as Ziegfeld girls, usually decked in elaborate costumes by designers such as Romain de Tirtoff, Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon or Ali Ben Hagan, which became the talk of Broadway theatre the following day.

After Ziegfeld's death, his widow Billie Burke authorized use of his name for Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and 1936. The name was later used by other promoters in New York City, Philadelphia and again on Broadway, with less connection to the original Follies. These latter efforts failed miserably. When later it toured, the 1934 edition was recorded in its entirety, from the Overture to Play-out music, on a series of 78 rpm discs, which were edited by the record producer David Cunard to form an album of the highlights of the production and which was released as a Compact Disc in 1997.

The 1936 Best Picture winner was The Great Ziegfeld, starring William Powell as the master showman. Co-starring Myrna Loy (as Ziegfeld's second wife Billie Burke), Luise Rainer (as Anna Held, which won her an Academy Award for Best Actress), and Frank Morgan (as a rival showman). Featuring numbers by Ray Bolger, Dennis Morgan, Virginia Bruce, and Harriet Hoctor, the film gave a glimpse into what the Follies were really like. The MGM blockbuster's show-stopper was "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody", which, by itself, cost more to produce than one of Ziegfeld's whole shows.

There was also a 1946 feature motion picture entitled ''Ziegfeld Follies'' with Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, William Powell, Gene Kelly, Fanny Brice, Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Cyd Charisse, Lucille Ball, Kathryn Grayson, and others performing songs and sketches similar to those from the original Follies.