Vintage Bowling Print - Pre War Hollywood - Jane Wyman - Starlet - The First Mrs Ronald Reagan

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

Print size 24 x 16, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

I love the research aspect of my work here at The Grand Review. As I imagine everyone does, I want to know everything about everything, so opening a door to any topic, especially with the broad range of images we work with here, allows me to tumble through endless rabbit holes, laughing, until I have to forcefully reel myself back in.  

Jane Wyman held the record for longest screen kiss for nearly 70 years.

There, I said it. Everything else should be easy from this point.

What a gal! What a surprisingly nervy gal, determined to make it to the point she added a few years to her age at 15 so she could legally work as a singer on the radio in early 30s Missouri. She bailed out to Hollywood and did odd jobs until landing work as a bit player in such films as The Kid From Spain (Eddie Cantor!!!). For five long years, age 15 to 20, she was an uncredited player in 18 big studio pictures. By the time she won the Academy Award for Johnny Belinda in 1948, she was 31 and it was her 63rd film.

Somewhere along the line she met B list leading man Ron Reagan. They got married, had a daughter and adopted a son, and at some point got divorced.

She remained silent during Reagan's political career, though she told a newspaper interviewer in 1968 that this was not because she was "bitter or because I don't agree with him politically. I've always been a registered Republican. But it's bad taste to talk about ex-husbands and ex-wives, that's all."

Refreshing.

She found a legion of new fans as a star on television's Falcon Crest, then retired into a relaxed and reclusive life in the Coachella Valley.

I had someone in the studio the other day and showed them the bland, faded mini magazine we restored to come up with this lively print. Smile inducing? You bet!

• 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.