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(Courtesy of Katrine and Sofie Barfoed)

Above - Janus Barfoed in his den, where he kept his amazing collection of B-western stills and posters.


Remembering Janus Barfoed


My old friend, famed western stills collector Janus Barfoed passed away at 82 years of age on February 14, 2010.

Janus owned one of the largest collections of original stills from B-westerns and spent many years researching them, combining his job as head of the stills archive at the Danish Film Museum. His stills were featured in many books, including Don Miller's legendary Hollywood Corral. Janus was a fan, collector and B-western scholar - he had met with many legends, including Ken Maynard and Wally Wales. He kept watching the films until the very last, using his incredible memory to identify many uncredited actors and extras in the films he screened and re-screened.

Janus' stills collection will be turned over (at his request) to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library, and that they have accepted to keep it as a separate entity as "The Jan Barfoed Collection".

Jakob Stegelmann
April, 2010



I never met him but we exchanged a lot of letters and information over a period of about fifteen years, and a few times in the last decade.

Jan probably helped me, as much or more than anybody, identify many of the seldom-credited faces in movies (all genres and eras). He was generous with his time and knowledge. Most of the issues of Yesterday's Saturdays carried a contributor's line for him, and his name is on the "Thanks to" list on Shoot-em-Ups. I looked forward to his letters over the years, and thought of him as "a good old boy from Texas", albeit he didn't live in Texas. But I don't have to meet and shake hands with somebody to know they are "good people". Jan Barfoed was exactly that.

He and Buck Rainey are probably, on a downhill and shady trail, discussing Wally Wales as I write this.

Les Adams
Little Elm, Texas
April, 2010



The Janus Barfoed collection at the Margaret Herrick Library: https://digitalcollections.oscars.org/digital/collection/p15759coll17/search

Online Archive of California and California Digital Library has a summary of the Janus Barfoed collection: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8028tqk/


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