CHARLES D. COBURN - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED 07/17/1946 - HFSID 289231

CHARLES COBURN
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Charles Coburn's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. The form is signed twice by Coburn, once as an autograph sample and again to grant permission. A remarkable, perfectly verified example!
Document signed twice: "Charles Coburn", with 3¾x2½ card affixed with autograph sample (two surfaces) 1 page, 8½x11. Los Angeles, California, 1946 July 17. Charles Coburn grants to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc., its successors and assigns, the exclusive right, until December 31, 1947 to use his name, autograph, photographic likeness, or artist's sketch of the likeness, for reproduction on engraved, embossed or printed stamps, and in stamp albums, and in connection with the advertising and exploitation of these stamps and stamp albums for sale throughout the world. Broadway actor, producer and director Charles Coburn (1877-1961), born Charles Douville Coburn, did not appear in his first feature film (Of Human Hearts) until 1938, when he was 61. In 1940, he portrayed Dr. Henry Gordon, who unjustly amputated Drake McHugh's (Ronald Reagan) legs in Kings Row, resulting in the future President's greatest screen line (and title of his first autobiography): "Where's the rest of me?" Coburn was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (1941, The Devil and Miss Jones; 1943, The More the Merrier; 1946, The Green Years). He won in 1943 for his portrayal of elderly Benjamin Dingle, a likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. The Motion Picture Relief Fund was founded in 1921 to assist ill and needy film industry veterans, as expressed in its motto: "We take care of our own." The fund raised money through voluntary payroll deductions and celebrity events. As President of the Fund from 1939 until his death in 1956, film and radio star Jean Hersholt conceived Hollywood Star Stamps as a fundraising method. These stamps, 468 in all, were sold at dime stores after World War II in sheets of 6-12, at 10 cents per sheet, and were an immediate hit with collectors. Now called the Motion Picture and Television Fund, the non-profit organization funds its own hospital and retirement home. It confers the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award annually at the Academy Awards ceremony to "an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry." Three filing holes at left (worn). Staple holes at top left. Normal mailing folds. Slightly creased. Slightly soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.