DICK HAYMES - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED 06/26/1946 CO-SIGNED BY: JEAN HERSHOLT - HFSID 289027

DICK HAYMES and JEAN HERSHOLT
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Haymes' signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. He has twice, once to authorize the transaction and again as an autograph sample. Also signed by Hersholt as President of the Fund, and by a studio representative. A perfectly verified example!
Document signed twice: "Dick Haymes", 1 page, 8½x11. Also signed "Jean Hersholt" as President of the Relief Fund, and by a representative of Twentieth Century-Fox (name illegible). Hollywood, California 1946 June 26. Haymes grants to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc., its successors and assigns, the exclusive right 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. DICK HAYMES (1918-1980) was a very popular big band singer of the 1940s and solo pop vocalist through the mid- 1950s. He sang with the bands of Harry James, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and was renowned for his mellow renditions of pop standards like "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "It Might as Well Be Spring." He appeared in a few films (State Fair, Four Jills and a Jeep), and might have been remained at the top had it not been for personal problems: alcohol, women (six stormy marriages, including one to Rita Hayworth), and citizenship problems. (Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn tried to get him deported.) 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." As an actor, Hersholt was best known for playing doctors: the one who delivered the Dionne quintuplets in The Country Doctor (1942) and his fictional Dr. Christian in a radio series and six feature films. Filing holes at left edge. Staple holes at top left edge. Minor smears in ink. Otherwise, fine condition.