BILLY GRAY - INSCRIBED SIGNATURE - HFSID 19779

BILLY GRAY
Billy Ray inscribes his signature to a fan on an index card.
Inscribed signature: "To/Jim/Bill Gray", 5x3 index card. Magazine photograph, b/w, 1x1, affixed at lower right margin. Typed caption at upper right margin. Ink notes (unknown hand) on verso state that this autograph was obtained at a broadcast of Toast of the Town (later The Ed Sullivan Show) on June 26, 1955. Billy Gray, born William Thomas Gray in 1938, began his acting career with bit parts in films at the age of five, but he is best known for his small screen role as "Bud" (Jim Anderson, Jr.) on the sitcom, Father Knows Best, which aired on CBS from 1954-1955 and 1958-1962 and on NBC from 1955-1958. The series also starred Robert Young (as Jim Anderson, Sr., a role he originated on radio in 1949), Jane Wyatt as his wife, Margaret, and Elinor Donahue and Lauren Chapin as Bud's sisters, Betty and Kathy (also known as "Kitten"). Gray, who reprised his role in the 1977 made-for-TV movie, Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas, appeared in several other TV movies as well as feature films including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Jim Thorpe - All American (1951), On Moonlight Bay (1952), Superman and the Jungle Devil (1954), The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Porklips Now (1980, in which he parodied Martin Sheen's performance in the previous year's Apocalypse Now). Rectangular shading at upper right touches typed caption. Stained at blank right edge. Overall, fine condition.