RAY MILLAND - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED 06/12/1946 - HFSID 289237

RAY MILLAND
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Ray Milland's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. The form is signed twice by Milland, once as an autograph sample and again to grant permission. A remarkable, perfectly verified example!
Document signed twice: "Ray Milland", 1 page, 8½x11. Los Angeles, California, 1946 June 12. Ray Milland grants to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc., its successors and assigns, the exclusive right, until December 31, 1947 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. Welsh actor Ray Milland (1907-1986) spent the 1930s and early 1940s playing light romantic leads in such films as Next Time We Love (1936); Three Smart Girls (1936); Easy Living (1937) in which he is especially charming opposite Jean Arthur in an early Preston Sturges script; and the major in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor (1942) opposite Ginger Rogers. Milland won an Oscar for his intense and realistic portrait of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend (1945).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 (worn). Staple holes at top left. Normal mailing folds. Slightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition.