Katherine Hepburn negatives - which film?

[Duolab123]

Not sure but this is the only other info I have. The company was dissolved in the late 90's. Probably because the photographer died and left it to the family.
Attachment 226451

Make some nice contact prints and hang it on your wall. Beautiful pictures.

[Pieter]

Who owns copyright?

Most probably the studio that made the film. In those days most photographers worked "for hire" and did not retain the rights to their images. Given the age of the image, it is probably in the public domain by now--not sure how many years it takes. The negatives themselves might even be copy negatives, made by the photographer for his own use. Is there any evidence of retouching (very common for a publicity shot) to the image?

[Duolab123]

The negative that was used to make the print, the image I found online, was probably the one that was chosen for distribution. Does the op have the negative of the image I found. Has to be from the same session, the clothes match. Probably a couple hours of makeup, huge hot lights. That would be amazing.

[Jim C.]

I'm not sure what the contents of the negatives are but they're worth saving, or donating
to some place that will archive them, too much of cinema history is lost because studio's
don't care to preserve their history.

[Duolab123]

I would make some great contact prints. Maybe splurge on some Adox Lupex. Or Fomatone, or Ilford warmtone. That's some real treasure, you have the responsibility of taking care of these amazing artifacts.

[jtomasella]

Most probably the studio that made the film. In those days most photographers worked "for hire" and did not retain the rights to their images. Given the age of the image, it is probably in the public domain by now--not sure how many years it takes. The negatives themselves might even be copy negatives, made by the photographer for his own use. Is there any evidence of retouching (very common for a publicity shot) to the image?

I don't see any retouching. Some of the negatives have letters and numbers on the bottom though.

[jtomasella]

The negative that was used to make the print, the image I found online, was probably the one that was chosen for distribution. Does the op have the negative of the image I found. Has to be from the same session, the clothes match. Probably a couple hours of makeup, huge hot lights. That would be amazing.

I do not, but I do have the negative of the picture when you google her name, I believe it is the one wiki uses.

[jtomasella]

I would make some great contact prints. Maybe splurge on some Adox Lupex. Or Fomatone, or Ilford warmtone. That's some real treasure, you have the responsibility of taking care of these amazing artifacts.

I plan to get 8x10 negative holders, they are just all piled into a sleeve right now. I guess they didn't splurge on archival back then. I contact printed all the negatives on some Ilford pearl rc.

[Pieter]

I plan to get 8x10 negative holders, they are just all piled into a sleeve right now. I guess they didn't splurge on archival back then. I contact printed all the negatives on some Ilford pearl rc.

Publicity photos were (and still are, really) disposable items, no one really cared about archival issues. There were labs churning them out in great numbers. For years (maybe even still now, I haven't checked) there were shops in Hollywood that would sell 8x10 publicity stills for very little.

[jnantz]

Publicity photos were (and still are, really) disposable items, no one really cared about archival issues. There were labs churning them out in great numbers. For years (maybe even still now, I haven't checked) there were shops in Hollywood that would sell 8x10 publicity stills for very little.

there was a episode on "strange inheritance" regarding children of a woman who worked at a magazine publishing company. the mother kept all the prints &c that were published by the magazine and the show was about their worth &c. the images were made by and of The Who's who from the "picture book" generation, you name them their portrait work or photo-imagery was in the collection .. the appraiser seemed to believe the images were quite valuable ...
I worked for a portrait photographer and made publicity photos all day long. I might have been churning them out, but they were all fixed and washed, it was the "proofs" of all the split and full 5x7 negatives that were barely fixed, and she put a rubber stamp that read "PROOF" across the images. It was a lot harder to retouch words off of an image back then.