PHOTOFEST: WHERE THE STARS ARE ALWAYS OUT! Written by Melinda Maclean Photographed by Mary Blanco

Where in New York can you find Joan Crawford drinking a Pepsi on the set of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, Marlon Brando scarfing down a hotdog, or the last surviving munchkin from The Wizard of Oz? At Photofest! Where movie stars dressed in decadent evening wear smile at you eternally from glossy 8x10s! Where vixens from outer space, exotic Amazons, dames packing pistols and broken hearts beckon to you from movie posters lining the walls. Bette, Joan, Greta, Marlene and yes, even Zsa Zsa...they tempt, demand, and melt, they slap, kill, and kiss...but they never get old!!! Photofest is a movie buff’s dream, a shrine to the timelessness of beauty and the glamour and imagination of Hollywood caught in black and white and Technicolor.

Located on the fifth floor of an inconspicuous building in the East 30’s, the Photofest archive offers up over two and a half million images ranging from movie stills and portraits to music, sports and TV personalities. The filing cabinets containing the photos form a rectangular maze, which may seem chaotic to a visitor, as the cabinets are labeled with secretive looking hieroglyphs, which occasionally may resemble a name like Bogart or Hepburn, but the researchers know where every image is and can track down the most obscure requests within moments. Some of the requests which come in from editors and writers are predictable like Janet Leigh in the shower or Marlon Brando in a torn T-shirt, but there are those occasional eyebrow raisers as well: a photo of William Shakespeare; (“And we’ve just gotten in some great Polaroid’s of Jesus Christ!”); Dustin Hoffman in his soap opera days; men in tuxedos jingling change (“No, it would be hard to show that in a photo!”).

Howard Mandelbaum, who started Photofest in 1983, told me how the idea for the archive came about. “I worked on the fringes of show business. And I always had an interest in collecting photos. Having a business meant I could subsidize my habit. And I knew other collectors. It’s a sub-culture. Sometimes sub-human. But that’s true of most specialists.”

Howard explained further about his adventures in the world of photo collecting, “I used to work at a store called Movie Star News and there was a mother-daughter team who used to come in and have their welfare checks cashed by my boss so they could buy William Shatner pictures. And of course there were the pin-up collectors. I mean guys who were probably too shy to buy pornography, but they’d get pictures of Jane Mansfield bursting out of her bikini. The beefcake crowd. The fetishists. The bondage guys. And there was a real trench coat brigade. But that’s what’s interesting about movie stills. People think, ‘Oh! I’m not a collector of fetishistic material, I’m a movie fan!’.”

He reminisced about seeing stars in New York, “As a kid I was fascinated by seeing stars on the street. In fact, coming into the city I used to wear a tie because I would think what if I see a celebrity, I don’t want him or her to think I’m a bum. I remember Henry Fonda asked me who won the ballgame when I went backstage at a play to get his autograph. And I thought, ‘My God! Young Mr. Lincoln talking to Howard Mandelbaum from Flushing, Queens!’ It was just thrilling.”

Sometimes the very stars whose images crowd Photofest come in to look through their own files. Howard recalled a recent visit from Peter Falk, “He was amazed to find so much material on himself and his co-stars. We were able to chart his whole career through photographs.” And Fay Wray visited shortly before she died, “She had total recognition of some of the photos. She knew what movie a certain dress was worn in but with other pictures, she would look at them and say, “Who’s that?” and we’d say, “That’s you, Fay!”

Howard also spoke about the changing nature of the business, “Every year we have fewer requests for the stars of the black and white period. There was a time when we did requests for trench coats. People would want Humphrey Bogart. Now whole generations have grown up who barely know who he is. And that’s just the nature of time. Time erases. But then it’s here if they want it.”

Photofest rents out their photos for editorial use only. They are not for sale to the public.

Their website is www.photofestnyc.com. Photofest is located at 32 East 31st Street , 5th floor, New York, NY 10016. Ph. (212) 633-6330   Fax (212) 366-9062
e-mail: requests@photofestnyc.com