CLAUDETTE COLBERT - AUTOGRAPH CO-SIGNED BY: SOPHIE TUCKER - HFSID 88805

CLAUDETTE COLBERT and SOPHIE TUCKER
Claudette Colbert and Sophie Tucker sign an album leaf
Signature: "Claudette Colbert" and on verso "Sophie/Tucker", 6x4 album leaf. Attached below Colbert's signature is a 1¼x1½ b/w newspaper photograph and to the left of Tucker's signature a 1x1½ b/w newspaper photograph. Paris-born actress Claudette Colbert was brought to New York at the age of seven. She embarked on a stage career in 1925. Colbert disliked film acting; but audiences responded to her beauty and cultured voice, so she forsook the stage for Hollywood. Her popularity (and salary) skyrocketed after she was cast as "the wickedest woman in history," Nero's unscrupulous wife Poppaea, in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Colbert showed her flair for sophisticated comedy by winning the 1934 Academy Award for Best Actress for It Happened One Night. Traveling the usual "fading star" route, Colbert made films in Europe and a budget Western in the U.S. before returning triumphantly to Broadway. In 1961, she returned to Hollywood as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish. It would be her last film appearance until the 1987 TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles - in which she far outclassed her material. After emigrating from Russia as an infant, Tucker (1884-1966), born Sonia Kalish to a Jewish family in Russia, began singing in her father's kosher restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut. Moving to New York, she established herself as a popular star of vaudeville and Broadway, appearing with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1909. In 1911, she recorded "Some of These Days", which became her signature song and the title of her 1945 autobiography. Other songs made famous by Tucker included "Red-Hot Mama" (in 1928, the Palace Theater in New York billed her as "The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas", a slogan that became synonymous with the bawdy singer-entertainer). Another song, "My Yiddische Mama", became all the more popular among European Jewry after it was banned by Hitler. Tucker, who made her film debut in Honky Talk (1929), made numerous film appearances in the 1950s and 1960s, and her TV appearances include several visits to the Ed Sullivan Show. Although Tucker tried all modes of entertainment, she preferred live cabaret audiences. File holes at left. Irregular edges. Fine condition.