What is your opinion on this Greta Garbo signed photo?

Greta Garbo signed photos from the 1950s or 1960s must be almost non-existing apart from this excellent piece.

Does anyone know the year of the Clarence Sinclair Bull photo? 

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A close up of the signature:

Sinclair Bull worked with her from 1929 to 1941 I believe. This photo is from 1939 or 1940 it seems..

This is from series of images from a portrait shoot with Bull in 1931.  The shoot was sponsored by MGM as publicity for Garbo's 3rd talkie, SUSAN LENOX (HER FALL AND RISE). 

Bull was head of the MGM stills department.  It's said that, for years, Garbo wanted to collaborate exclusively with Bull on her MGM portrait sessions. 

Here's an original from 1931 with Bull's blind stamp:

I found the same image attached to a different 1931 film - you'd know better than I!

Yep... definitely the bangs she sported in LENOX and the publicity around it.

Wasn't Clark Gable in that movie?

That's the one.

I rather thought so. I read MGM paired him with Garbo to increase his star-power. 

I've not done any checking back but my gut feel is that the signature stands every chance of being OK. The only problem is that the contrast is absolutely lousy. I have a similar problem with a Monroe (MM that is) of mine. Lovely. top quality double-weight photo but terrible signature contrast, if not quite as bad as in this Garbo.  

Why do you say that this is from the 1950s/60s? The original photograph is from the 1930s but of course this could be a later print.

May very well be a later print as it is so cropped the composition was removed and  it is also very over-contrasted. Extremely unfortunate ink contrast.

"unfortunate" is a good word to describe the contrast. 

That and the reality that it may be a stamp (or at best, proxy, if 'live ink').

This image is from the auctioneer's listing.

The signature is live ink. It is possible that the line in the first ”G” was misplaced for various reasons. Maybe the pen did not work well.


This is a similar signature on a check:

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