STEPIN FETCHIT - AUTOGRAPH LETTER DOUBLE SIGNED 09/22/1982 - HFSID 217842

STEPIN FETCHIT
Stepin Fetchit signs an autograph letter twice.
Autograph Letter Signed: "Stepin Fetchit" (twice), 1p, 8½x11. Woodland Hills, California, 1982 September 22. On letterhead of Motion Picture and Television Hospital to Dave Martin, Bausan, Pennsylvania. In full, with original grammar and spelling: "I have a long. my name to the opportuny. But I to may. To imaginte. I immatation but this sign. I been to a new steer. I is sign. To date. I ain't going which to my ain't to they out. I ninth to [arrow drawn to printed hospital address, which is circled]. Hope it's true. True to buis- [sic]. First for an mine the your can to be a first." Fetchit, who wrote incoherent letters during his final years, has also signed his name at upper margin above the handwritten date. The first Black actor to become a millionaire, Fetchit (1902-1985), who debuted in In Old Kentucky (1927), made some 50 films. Born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, Stepin Fetchit renamed himself before his arrival in Hollywood (in the late 1920s) for a racehorse that won money for him. The first Black actor to receive featured billing in American films and was a millionaire in the 1930s, he also composed and wrote the lyrics for the score of One More Spring (1935). Although Fetchit's screen image is criticized for reinforcing negative stereotypes about Black Americans, he received a special Image Award from the Hollywood chapter of the NAACP (1976) and was elected to the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame (1978). Lightly creased. Correction fluid at upper margin touches 2 lines of writing. Overall, fine condition.