Thousands of unseen Bettie Page photographs are coming to auction next year.
The photographs of the 1940s and 1950s pin-up come from the famed collection of Movie Star News, the New York City store that specialised in movie star photographs.
 Bettie Page upset the Senate in the 1950s |
The much-missed store sold its collection of 3m photographs, 250,000 negatives and 10,000 films, featuring more than 5,000 stars, to a Las Vegas firm last week for more than $1m, according to Daily News.
Irving Klaw, the photographer who established the store in 1939, took the photographs of Page after she answered an advertisement in the 1940s.
The photographs are thought to come from his sister Paula's collection. Irving had attempted to remove traces of Page from his work, when he was threatened with imprisonment during the 1950s during the Senate's pornography rulings.
The photographs will auction alongside whips, ropes and chains as well as nine pairs of shoes that Page employed during the shoots.
An iconic figure, Page was the world's 13th top earning dead celebrity in 2011 with $6m, according to Forbes, tied with George Harrison and Andy Warhol - we expect this collection to perform superbly.
They items will be sold in January, alongside collected lots from other stars.
"There's over 750 original negatives and photos of Marilyn Monroe, from the early, early years of her career," Stuart Scheinman, the collection's new owner, told the publication.
"There are 680 Betty Grable originals. These are tens of thousands of original negatives that nobody's ever seen before."
He added that values for individual lots will range from $20 to $100,000.
We have these superb Marilyn Monroe items currently available.
Movie Star News, which ran in New York for 73 years, specialised in buying stills from movie companies and selling them on to fans.
We will bring you more from the auction as the date approaches.
