IIONA MASSEY - CHRISTMAS / HOLIDAY CARD SIGNED - HFSID 278338

ILONA MASSEY
Christmas card signed "With best wishes" in red ink
Christmas card signed "With best wishes/Ilona Massey" in red ink. With pencil notations on opposite page in unknown hand. Color, 4x5¼, 1 sheet folded in quarters. Christmas card by Ambassador Cards. ©Ambassador Cards. Inscribed above signature: "Merry Christmas/Happy New Year". Massey (1910-1974, born Ilona Hajmássy in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, now Hungary) was an American actor with 23 TV shows and films to her credit. Massey was born into poverty and paid for singing lessons with her earnings a dressmaker's apprentice. She sang in the Vienna State Opera and made her film premiere in a 1935 Austrian film, Der Himmel auf Erden. She premiered in Hollywood in Rosalie (1937) and was soon cast in three Nelson Eddy movies - including what was reportedly her favorite of her films, Balalaika (1939). She went on to star in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and as a femme fatale in the Marx Brothers' Love Happy and on Broadway in Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 (1943-1944). She moved to TV in 1950 and hosted her own variety show in 1953, The Ilona Massey Show. Massey was a vehement anti-communist, especially after the 1956 uprisings in her native Hungary, and reportedly once picketed the United Nations when Nikita Kruschev was visiting, demanding his expulsion. Lightly toned and creased. Paper clip impression at top edge. Otherwise in fine condition.