JANE WITHERS - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED 08/12/1946 - HFSID 288795

JANE WITHERS
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Jane Withers's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. The form is signed twice by Withers, once as an autograph sample and again to grant permission. A remarkable, perfectly verified example!
Document signed twice: "Jane Withers", 1 page, 8½x11. Los Angeles, California, 1946 August 12. Jane Withers 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. Jane Withers (1926-2021) was starring at age four on her own radio program in Atlanta, doing imitations of celebrities. She began her film career with bit parts, eventually (at age eight) winning the plum role of the obnoxious brat who bedevils sweet little Shirley Temple in Bright Eyes. This role won Jane a contract at Fox Studios, and for the next seven years she starred in a series of comedies and musicals. Her later films included Giant (1956) and Captain Newman, M.D., and Withers also voiced a number of animated TV characters and guest starred on several TV series. To TV viewers of the 1960s and 1970s, Withers will be forever associated with her long-running (and extremely lucrative) stint as Josephine the Plumber in a popular series of commercials for Comet cleanser. 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." Three filing holes at left. Normal mailing folds. Staple holes at top left. Slightly soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.