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Has anyone ever been to a silent screen stars estate sale? You proably could have found alot of great silent film memorabilia from the time, old contracts, costumes, pictures, correspondence. It would have been mostly in Southern California and most of them the general public wouldnt even have heard of. Has anyone?

Several readers of this forum purchased Rex Ingram sculpture at Alice Terry's estate sale. We were aware of them because we knew her before she became an, umm, estate.

David Shepard

DShepFilm wrote:Several readers of this forum purchased Rex Ingram sculpture at Alice Terry's estate sale. We were aware of them because we knew her before she became an, umm, estate.

David Shepard

That "several" was me--bidding for myself and on behalf of David and for Randy Haberkamp. I think we made out alright, and I still treasure the full-sized bronze bust of "Shorty" Ben Mairoch sculpted by Rex Ingram that I acquired that day. Mairoch was Ingram's dwarf "mascot," who first worked with the director on "The Arab," I believe.

One of the lots that got away was a box of stills, and in the box was a 1916 telegram from Pat Powers to Ingram urging the director to stop filling his films with dwarfs and other mis-shapen folks. The woman who outbid me on that box was not a movie memorabilia collector--and I don't recall ever seeing the stuff surface since that auction. I've ofyen wondered what happened to it.

I've seen a couple of items from the original Pickfair auction turn up on Ebay before (I would do my homework before bidding, though).

Descendants and family members are now also passing away, so it's well worth keeping an eye on local auction listings - especially as families may not value the memorabilia the same way we would.

Last year, I bought a number of items that had belonged to the Wirth Circus family (the equivalent of Barnum & Bailey here in Australia), including theatre and circus programmes that had been hand-annotated by the family matriarch, Marizles Wirth. The bulk of the rest went to museums. These sorts of miracles can still happen!

A few years ago I discovered that an antique dealer in Canton, Texas, was selling some of Mary Pickford's unused stationery, so naturally I bought a sample. It was pretty cheap.