HENRY FONDA - DOCUMENT SIGNED 06/26/1946 - HFSID 288921

HENRY FONDA
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Henry Fonda's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. The form is signed twice by Fonda, once as an autograph sample and again to grant permission. A remarkable, perfectly verified example!
Document signed: "Henry Fonda", 2 pages, 8½x11. No place, 1946 June 26. Henry Fonda 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. One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda (1905-1982) enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. His first important Broadway part was in the first edition of New Faces in 1934. That was followed by the title role in The Farmer Takes a Wife, which he repeated in Hollywood the following year. Two years later, Fonda was an established star appearing in such films as Jezebel, Jesse James, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk and The Grapes of Wrath. Fonda enlisted and served three years in the Navy during WWII-serving in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific, he was awarded a Presidential Citation and the Bronze Star. In March 1982, five months before he died at the age of 77, Henry Fonda won his only Academy Award for his performance in On Golden Pond, co-starring Katharine Hepburn and his daughter, Jane Fonda. In 1999, Fonda was named the sixth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. 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." Filing holes at left edge. Staples holes at top edge. Lightly toned. Multiple mailing folds. Otherwise, fine condition.