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I used to travel to NYC starting in the 1980's looking through all the movie star warehouses for original images or very rare ones. You could get a quality very rare negative to a common reproduced print, and just depended on what you wanted to spend. I was lucky to find some very rare negatives and prints where you could see all the brush strokes and touch-ups, very few around so I jumped when I saw this image.

I started getting a few images when I was just 13 years old, some signed that I still treasure of Elizabeth Taylor. Later on I was lucky enough to meet and know Chen Sam's parents, who became good friends as they were collectors like me and lived in Toronto where I was living, they suggested that i get in contact with Chen Sam, who was E.T's publicist, and later on, after the 1990's passed and Miss Sam died in Elizabeth's Los Angeles home when she became ill. I have included 2 photos of Elizabeth I got when I was 13 years old above !~

Basically I used the b&w images to blow up to 20 X 24 inch size mainly, and I hand painted them, then framed them to sell to all the collectors who wanted photos of such stars as Marilyn Monroe. Some people laughed at me when I told them I was going to paint them, but after only a year, I got quite good at it, and I was selling up to 50 large ones in a year. Of course Marilyn was my best seller. I decorated several hair salons at the time with pictures and had a lot of private clients also. I had about 3 stores that sold the pictures. I was lucky to do very well, especially at Christmas, and was able to open a lot of champagne bottles from the profits. I really treasure the years that I was selling these photos and my own photos of models, friends, and clients that I took myself. Those were the very best years !~