IRENE CASTLE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED - HFSID 132042

IRENE CASTLE
Her warm autograph letter signed in ink, inside a Christmas card bearing her imprinted name and message
Autograph Letter signed: Irene Castle", 9¾x6 opened flat. Undated Christmas card from Conrad's Fine Art Publishing Co., London, bearing her imprinted greeting. In full: "Hi! Missed your flattery at my last two birthday parties and have come down to the Ozarks for the third - to hide. It has been warm as toast so far but it may change quite noticeably before April 7th! Your warm praise of me has helped me through the last two years and I hope before I reach the last birthday, that we may meet again. Affection Blessigs". Irene Foote (1893-1969) married English-born Vernon Castle in 1911. After some minor stage appearances in New York, the couple moved to Paris, where they became a nightclub sensation, demonstrating and popularizing the latest American dances, including the Turkey Trot. Their fame followed them back to the US, and by 1914 they owned their own nightclub and dance school and were teaching dances to New York's high society. Irving Berlin wrote the stage musical Watch Your Step (1914) for the Castle's, and in it they popularized the Fox Trot. They starred together in a feature film, The Whirl of Life (1915). The Castles, and especially Irene, greatly influenced American culture. They did much to make close dancing, and also African-American music and musicians "respectable." Irene's fashions, and her bobbed hair style, later known as the flapper hair style, were considered very chic. Vernon Castle became a decorated combat pilot in World War I, but was killed while instructing other pilots in 1918. Irene Castle married three more times, designing the Chicago Black Hawks uniform for her third husband, hockey franchise owner Frederic McLaughlin. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starred in a 1939 RKO bio-film about the Castles, although Irene Castle was displeased with many of Rogers' interpretations. Irene Castle was an early and outspoken advocate for civil rights and animal rights. Creased at corners. Otherwise, fine condition.