ROBERT BLAKE - DOCUMENT DOUBLE SIGNED - HFSID 288716

ROBERT BLAKE
Consent form authorizing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to reproduce Robert Blake's signature and likeness for a series of stamps raising money for needy film industry veterans. The form is signed once by Blake as an autograph sample and signed in his name by his mother to grant permission. A remarkable, perfectly verified example!
Document signed: "Bobby Blake", his mother signs below his signature in both of their names, 1 page, 8½x11. Los Angeles, California, no date. Robert Blake 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. Robert Blake, born Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi in 1933, was a child actor (as Mickey Gubitosi) in forty Our Gang comedies as well as the Red Ryder series. Portraying Tony Baretta, a New York City undercover policeman in the 1975-1978 Emmy Award winning ABC series Baretta, Blake won an Emmy Award in 1975 (he was also nominated for an Emmy for the role in 1977) and the 1976 Golden Globe Award for Best TV Actor in a Drama. Blake was also nominated for an Emmy Award for the made-for-TV movie, Judgment Day: The John List Story (1973), and he received nominations for Golden Globes for Electra Glide in Blue (1973) and for the made-for-TV movie Blood Feud (1983). His notable films include Pork Chop Hill (1959), Town Without Pity (1961) and In Cold Blood (1967), and Blake also guest starred on a long list of TV shows. In April 2005, he was acquitted of charged that he had murdered, or arranged the murder of his wife Bonnie Lee Bakley in 2001. 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 edge (with re-enforcements). Staple holes at top left. Normal mailing folds. Lightly creased and soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.