ERIK RHODES - AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: VIOLA DANA, BENITA HUME, TOBY WING, VINCE BARNETT, HALLIWELL HOBBES, DOROTHEA WIECK - HFSID 87165

1930's CELEBRITIES AND PERSONALITIES: ERIK RHODES, DANAVIOLA, TOBY WING, DOROTHEA WIECK, and 3 others
A star studded signature sheet featuring seven actors and actresses of the 1930's: Erik Rhodes, Viola Dana, Benita Hume, Toby Wing, Vince Barnett, Halliwell Hobbes, and Dorothea Wieck. Extremely rare!
Autograph note signed: "Best wishes to/Maurice/Erik Rhodes", "Dorothea Wieck/13 VI 33", "Halliwell [Hobbes] Jr", "To Mau[rice]/Toby [Wing]", "Benita Humes", "To Maurice/Viola Dana", "[Vince] Barnett", in blue ink, 6¼x9½. "Jeffery" merits further research. Some areas of signatures have been cut off from sheet for unknown reasons. Stage, screen and television actor ERIK RHODES (1906-1990), born Ernest Sharpe, appeared in several other feature films, including The Nitwits (1935), Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938) and On Your Toes (1939), before forsaking Hollywood to return to the stage. In 1948, Rhodes made his debut on the small screen, and he would guest star on episodes of several TV series through 1961. VINCE BARNETT (1902-1977), the son of comedian Luke Barnett began his comic career by hiring himself out for parties, posing as a clumsy waiter. He played supporting film roles from the early 1930s, such as an illiterate gangster in Scarface (1930), until shortly before his death. He appeared in several episodes of TV's Andy Griffith Show in the late 1960s. VIOLA DANA (1897-1987) starred in Broadway in Poor Little Rich Girl (1913), then embarked on a film career. Her first film, The Children of Eve (1915), directed by her first husband John H. Collins, who died in the flu epidemic of 1918, portrayed the Triangle fire of 1911. She flourished through the 1920s, starring in Frank Capra's first film for Columbia studios (That Certain Thing, 1928). The studios, not liking her voice, retired Dana with the advent of talkies. When her early silent films were rediscovered in the 1970s, however, she became much sought after as an interview for her lively accounts of early filmmaking. HALLIWELL HOBBES (1877-1962) was an English Shakespearean actor, born appropriately in Stratford-on-Avon. He moved to Hollywood in 1929, appearing in over 100 films, usually in supporting roles. He was in the cast of such well known films as Charley's Aunt, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Story of Louis Pasteur and That Hamilton Woman. Hobbes played British general Lord Raglan in The White Angel, the story of Florence Nightingale (Kay Francis) in the Crimean War. Hobbes left films in the mid-1940s to concentrate on stage work, with occasional appearances in TV plays. Many of his stage credits include his stage debut in Caesar and Cleopatra (1906), the 1929 original play Be Your Age, the 1952-1953 revival of The Male Animal, and his last onstage appearance in the 1955 original play A Day By the Sea. In 1962, at the age of eighty-four, Halliwell Hobbes passed away. BENITA HUME (1906-1967), the sister of MGM screenwriter Cyril Hume, began her career as a pianist but turned to acting "for excitement." She made her film debut in 1925, the year before she starred in one of Alfred Hitchcock's early silents, Easy Virtue. After moving to Hollywood in 1932, Hume made a long list of feature films, including The Worst Woman in Paris (1933), The Private Life of Don Juan(1934), The Gay Deception (1935) and Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus. German stage and film actress DOROTHEA WIECK (1908-1986) earned national acclaim for portraying Fraulein von Bernburg in Mädchen in Uniform (Girl in Uniform, 1931). Starting in films at the age of 18, Wieck appeared in over 50 movies in her career, notablyA Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), Anna and Elizabeth (1933) andMiss Fane's Baby Is Stolen (1934). In theatre she starred in the Deutsches Theater and the Schillertheater in Berlin. She received the Duetsche Filpreis' Film Ribbon in Gold Award for her lifetime achievement in acting in 1973. American actress and sex symbol TOBY WING (1915-2001), born Martha Virginia Wing, was a Hollywood chorus girl of the 1930s, but had greater success as a pinup girl and doing product endorsements. She appeared in a total of 45 movies between 1924 and 1938, most of them in the chorus or in support roles, with a few starring roles in B features late in her career. Wing appeared in three Busby Berkeley-choreographed movies in the early 1930s, including 42nd Street (1933), and was often awarded close-ups when the camera panned over the chorus. She retired in 1938 after marrying Dick Merrill, the first pilot to fly a round-trip transatlantic flight. Irregularly cut. Large sections of sheet missing. Ink notes (unknown hand) adding death dates. Light surface creases. Corners lightly worn and creased. Toned. Right edge frayed and torn. Unsigned photograph of Wieck affixed above signature. Otherwise, fine condition.