JOE E. BROWN - AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED 10/27/1944 CO-SIGNED BY: ROBERT ST. JOHN, BENNETT CERF, IRVING STONE, JUDGE R. T. THOMAS, ROSEMARY DRACHMAN TAYLOR - HFSID 29575

JOE E. BROWN, IRVING STONE, BENNETT CERF, ROBERT ST JOHN and others
One comic actor and five authors sign the guest roster of Chicago bookstore manager Rose Oller Harbaugh, known for her book-signing parties.
Autograph Note signed: "10.27/[19]44/Rose -/You are a driver, but/it was fun./Joe E. Brown", "Dear Rose,/You do give the grandest parties./Thank you lots./Rosemary Taylor/October 28, 1944", "Sincerely/Robert St John", and on verso "Dear Rose/You are the/greatest book woman in/America, and we all love/you for the great work/you are doing./With admiration/Irving Stone/Nov. 4, 1944", "Dear Rose/It was a pleasure to meet you/Best of luck/'Judge' R. T. Thomas", "For Rose:/With my love, sacred & profane/Nov. 18, 1944 Bennett Cerf", 1 page (front and verso), 7½x11¼ album leaf. Madcap comedian JOE E. BROWN (1892-1973) played vaudeville, burlesque, and the Broadway stage before breaking into films in 1928. His popularity peaked in the 1930s, but his performances continued into the TV era. Brown's films include The Circus Kid (1928), Show Boat (1951), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Some Like it Hot (1959) and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963). He made his last film, The Comedy of Terrors, in 1964. ROSEMARY DRACHMAN TAYLOR (1899-1981), born to a pioneer family in Tucson, Arizona, wrote a popular reminiscence about her childhood, Chicken Every Sunday, which was turned into a play and film. She went on to write more reminiscences, but also works of history, including In Letters of Gold, a biography of English suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. ROBERT ST JOHN (1902-2003) became the youngest newspaper publisher in America when he co-founded The Cicero Tribune (with younger brother Archer St John, later founder of St John Press, in 1923. He received a beating for reporting on Al Capone's mob activities. St John covered the 1932 Presidential election for the Associated Press. An NBC-Radio broadcaster from 1942, he covered the London Blitz, and sent the first reports home of the D-Day landing and Germany's surrender. The atrocities he witnessed in Europe made him a lifelong critic of anti-Semitism and advocate for the Jewish people (Israeli President David Ben-Gurion would call him "our goyisher Zionist". From the Land of Silent People (1942), the first of his 23 books, was a best seller. Fired by NBC in 1950 after spurious charges of communist sympathy, he continued writing and reporting for decades, mostly from the Middle East. IRVING STONE (1903-1989) wrote fictionalized portraits of American First Families, including Andrew and Rachel Jackson (The President's Lady, 1951) and Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln (Love is Eternal, 1954) and John and Abigail Adams (Those Who Love, 1965). Other Stone novels focused on historical figures include Vincent van Gogh (Lust for Life, 1934) and Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy, 1965). When he signed this guest book, R. T. THOMAS had just published a book which remains in print seven decades later, Britain and Vichy: The Dilemma of Anglo-French Relations, 1940-1942. He was a journalist, not a judge, whatever role Ms Harbaugh may have assigned him at her book signing party. BENNETT CERF (1898-1971, born in New York City) was a publisher who co-founded Random House, Inc. with Donald Knopfler in 1925, when they bought the Modern Library of Cerf's former employer, Boni & Liveright. Cerf was the author of several books of puns and jokes, beginning with Try and Stop Me (1944). He was familiar to a generation of TV viewers as a frequent panelist on What's My Line? (1950-1967). ROSE OLLER HARBAUGH, to whom these notes were written, was a longtime manager and buyer for the book department of the Marshall Field department store in Chicago and organized many successful book signing parties. Lightly frayed at left edge. Slightly toned and worn at edges. Otherwise, fine condition.