Haneda Tokyo International Airport, Japan, March 30, 1958: Actor William Holden is all smiles on this photo print, despite being ruthlessly cut in favor of his wife, actress Brenda Marshall.

The red marks indicate crop and edits to be made in the composition room so only the desired part of the photograph is published in the newspaper. In this case, the editors were not interested in Holden, but wanted only his wife, hence the big X through the actor’s face.

The background of Brenda Marshall is greyed out to appear uniform when printed as her photo would run only as a portrait of her face in the paper.

When digitizing photo prints from our Pacific Stars and Stripes archives, we scan every image twice. Once in color with all the crop and edit marks present and visible. The second scan is a B&W scan after archives’ staff have carefully removed the red edit marks.

As the vast majority of pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963, the prints developed from the late 1940s through 1963 are the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those decades – with the exception the negatives of some 190 pre-1964 photo assignment found recently. Stars and Stripes’ archives team is scanning these prints and negatives to ensure the preservation of the images captured.

See the second scan of the photo print from the Stars and Stripes Pacific photo print collection here.

related stories

• William Holden and Brenda Marshall arrive in Tokyo, 1958