IRVING BERLIN - AUTOGRAPH CO-SIGNED BY: ROGER LIVESEY - HFSID 152145

IRVING BERLIN and ROGER LIVESEY
They have signed opposite sides of an album leaf.
Signatures: "Irving Berlin", 4½x3¾ gray album leaf, and on verso "Roger Livesey". IRVING BERLIN (1888-1989), born Israel Isidore Baline in Tumen, Siberia, Russia, was such a force in American music that in 1924, when Berlin was just 37, songwriter Jerome Kern gave this assessment: "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." If the only song he ever wrote was "God Bless America", made famous by Kate Smith, Berlin would be an important part of American music. But Berlin wrote more than 900 songs, including the classics "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Always", "Easter Parade" and "Blue Skies", 19 musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam, and the scores of 18 movies, including Holiday Inn, which featured his 1942 Academy Award-winning song, "White Christmas". Welsh actor ROGER LIVESEY (1906-1976) appeared in his first film (The Four Feathers) in 1921. He is most closely associated with the title role in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), in which he portrayed the previously caustic cartoon version of a reactionary Englishman as a likable, if eccentric, character. Livesey, rejected by the Royal Air Force as too old, went to work in an aircraft factory to help the war effort, but was released to make Colonel Blimp. Livesey was married to actress Ursula Jeans, whose boxer brother Desmond was married to Livesey's sister. Livesey and Jeans appeared on stage an in films together, including Blimp and 1961's The Queen's Guard. Fine condition.