CONNIE MARSHALL - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED 06/26/1946 CO-SIGNED BY: JEAN HERSHOLT, CATHARINE B. MARSHALL - HFSID 288770

CONNIE MARSHALL and JEAN HERSHOLT
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Marshall's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. Also signed by a studio representative, by Fund President Jean Hersholt, and by her mother. A perfectly verified example of the very rare signature of "the Queen of Pigtails."
Document Fragment signed twice: "Constance B. Marshall" and "Connie Marshall" , 1 page, 8½x11. Also signed by "Jean Hersholt" as President of the Fund, by "Catharine B. Marshall" [her mother], and by a representative of Twentieth Century-Fox Films [name illegible]. Hollywood, California, 1946 June 26. Only the third and final page, the signature page, is present. Marshall grants to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc., its successors and assigns, the exclusive right to use her 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. CONNIE BEEKMAN MARSHALL (1933-2001, although some sources give an earlier birth day), a lineal descendent of Chief Justice John Marshall and of Gerardus Beekman, the first colonial governor of the Province of New York, was a child model in demand for commercial ads. She made her first film appearance in Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944), and had soon played the daughter of Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, Maureen O'Hara and John Payne, Betty Grable and Dan Dailey, Vincent Price, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy (in Mr. Blanding Builds His Dram House, 1948), William Bendix and Dana Andrews (narrowly escaping Joan Crawford as a stepmom in this one, Daisy Kenyon). Her last credited role was as a feisty frontier teenager in Gene Autry's Saginaw Trail (1953). Told she had polio, Marshall left films in 1954 and returned to high school. She never re-entered films, despite what critics discerned as serious acting talent beneath her "Queen of Pigtails" image. 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, film and radio star JEAN HERSHOLT (1886-1956) 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." On screen, Hersholt may be best remembered in the title role of The Country Doctor (1936). Filing holes at left edge. Staples holes at top left corner. Multiple mailing folds. Pencil notes (unknown hand). Otherwise, fine condition.