Silent Era Hollywood Print - Frank Mayo - Silent Movie Star - Spanish Chocolate Premium - 1920s

Treasures from THE FILM COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 20 x 24, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

One of the many obscure treasures we chase are cheaply printed premium cards originally tucked into chocolate bar packages, tobacco products and the like. Mostly made in Europe, 1920s through the late 50s. You can troll through an ocean of them and come up empty handed and then suddenly... an unexpected miracle!

See through our eyes for a moment and understand that this card has some of the best of the elements we're looking for when mining this particular vein of gold. Heavy, simple bright colors, heavily laid on. Uneven registry. Sounds terrible, but whoever put this together originally was inadvertently creating something unique and a little crazy. We took the original, moved the copy around and pushed the colors, really pushed them, with lightening the whites of his eyes as a subtle finish.

My kids found the finished work comically uncomfortable in the studio, but I watched them watching people out at shows who stood in front of this print, transfixed. They listened as I was asked questions and offered comments and critique, and watched the unabashed glee of the folks who were swept away enough to take one home.

Frank Mayo was an American film actor who began his career back in the mid Teens in California at the long forgotten Balboa Studios in Long Beach. Bit player to leading man in the silent era, then character actor for many years after, Frank appeared in 310 films between 1911 and 1949. Nobody could call him lazy! Add to all the above that he was married for some years to the utterly notorious Dagmar Godowsky who, when queried about the number of husbands she had responded "Two of my own, my dear, and several of my friends."

Long absent from popular American culture, Mr. Mayo lives again as a lively example of serendipitous pop art.

***NOTE*** The second photo is just for reference. Frank Mayo in a more typical Frank Mayo presentation from The Blazing Trail, 1921.

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.