HORACE HEIDT - INSCRIBED ILLUSTRATION SIGNED CIRCA 1942 CO-SIGNED BY: DOROTHY A. AHRENS - HFSID 102033

HORACE HEIDT and DOROTHY A. AHRENS
Signed 1942 b/w bust pencil sketch by Dorothy A. Ahrens of big band leader Horace Heidt
Inscribed illustration signed: "To/'Dorothea'/You certainly/have a great/talent, and future./Sincerely/Horace Heidt". B/w, 12x15¾ overall, 10x12 image, one surface. HORACE HEIDT (1901-1986), who had a childhood stammer and a seeming lack of interest in music, seemed an unlikely candidate for one of the most successful big band leaders of the late 1930s and early 1940s. He preferred football, but a back injury in college ended any football dreams that he might have had. To make a living, Heidt organized his first band, Horace Heidt and the Californians, in 1923. The band got bigger, went through some name changes and finally hit it big in 1936, when they got their first radio broadcast from the Drake Hotel in Chicago, Illinois as Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights. The show, Heidt's Pot O' Gold, ran for nine years and included an on-air cash giveaway that helped the show retain its popularity. Heidt's hits include Gone with the Wind (1937), Little Heaven of the Seven Seas (1937) Ti-Pi-Tin (1938), The Man with the Mandolin (1939) and The Hut-Hut Song (1941). A number of important musicians and singers got their start with Heidt's band, including singers the King Sisters, Gordon MacRae and Art Carney, composer Frank DeVol, guitarist Alvino Rey, pianist Frankie Carle and Jess Stacy and trumpeter Bobby Hackett. Heidt turned his attention from big band music as musical tastes changed and started investing in hotels and other property, making him one of the wealthiest men in the entertainment business by the 1950s. DOROTHY AHRENS sketched many popular musical talents of the 1940s, including Skitch Henderson, Ted Lewis and Kate Smith, then invited them to autograph her art. Lightly toned, soiled, creased and rippled. Tack hole near top edge. Otherwise in fine condition.