NANCY FLEMING - AUTOGRAPH NOTE SIGNED 1961 CO-SIGNED BY: IAN (DUKE OF BEDFORD XIII) RUSSELL, NICOLE (DUCHESS OF BEDFORD) SCHNEIDER - HFSID 34152

NANCY FLEMING; DUKE and DUCHESS OF BEDFORD
They pen notes to radio/TV interview host George Sanders on opposite sides of an album leaf.
Autograph Note signed: "Best wishes/and thanks for helping/to make my Portland visit/such a pleasant one/Nancy Fleming/Miss America/1961", 8x10¼ album leaf. Also signed on verso: "A sunny January day/Nicole de Bedford", "With best wishes and thank you for the/most amazing interview ever./Jan 24th 1961/Bedford". Captioned newspaper photos of each signer attached. NANCY FLEMING (b. 1942) Miss Michigan, won the Miss America pageant in 1961. She became a program host and interviewer for ABC-TV, PBS, and the Lifetime Channel. The politically active Fleming is a major donor to the Democratic Party.   JOHN IAN RUSSELL (1917-2002) became the 13th DUKE OF BEDFORD at the passing of his father, the 12th Duke, in 1953. He served in the Coldstream Guards in the opening phase of World War II (1939-1940), but was invalided out of service. He became a reporter for the Daily Express, and would ultimately write four books, including The Duke of Bedford's Book of Snobs (1965). When he inherited the ducal title in 1953, the new Lord Beford, long estranged from his father and grandfather, had rarely seen the ancestral mansion, Woburn. Finding the mansion in extreme disrepair and the family deeply in debt, Bedford resolved to rebuild it with funds raised by opening the estate to the public and using it for commercial purposes. (Other peers were contemptuous of these measures at the time, but such steps are common now.) Bedford, twice widowed, returned to the headlines with his marriage to the third Duchess, the colorful Parisian graphic artist NICOLE SCHNEIDER (1920-2012), who became DUCHESS OF BEDFORD in 1960. The gregarious hostess proved the perfect companion to the Duke in restoration and commercialization of his estate. (She would publish her own racy memoir, Nicole Nobody, in 1974.) A popular figure and winner of Best Dressed Man awards, the Duke moved to Monte Carlo in 1974, leaving management of the very successful Woburn enterprise to his son and heir, Robin Russell. George R. Sanders, originally a disc jockey, became a prominent radio/TV interview host, first in Los Angeles and later in Portland. Left edge frayed and worn from binding. Lightly toned. Light surface creases. Ink notes (unknown hand). Otherwise, fine condition.