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Joel McCrea was an actor well remembered as a durable leading man of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but he was far from an overnight success; he made his first movie in 1927, but it took five years and 20 movies until he became a leading man, and even then, he tended to play the male lead to a stronger female actress; unfortunately, he lost many great parts to Gary Cooper, and played a lot of parts that Cooper turned down; but he had many very memorable performances, and continued acting all the way to 1976, with a very memorable performance as an aging cowboy in 1962's "Ride the High Country", opposite Randolph Scott, who came out of retirement to make this one last movie. Some of his movies include: Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and Foreign Correspondent. Note that he met actress Frances Dee while they were making a movie together in 1933, and they married that same year, and after that their marriage and their three sons took center stage in her life, so she only made sporadic movie and TV appearances in the 1940s and early 1950s (most notably in I Walked With a Zombie!), and then she completely retired in 1954, and McCrea mostly retired in 1962, and the two lived together at their 300 acre ranch in Thousand Oaks, California (they were quite wealthy). They remained married until he passed away in 1990 at the age of 84, and she passed away in 2004 at the age of 94.

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION has been personally autographed (signed) by Joel McCrea! Also note that this still measures 8 1/4" x 9 3/4" [21 x 25 cm].

Note that this autographed 8x10 is part of a remarkable new collection we have been consigned, and we are auctioning nearly 500 items from this collection in this set of auctions (we will have more from this collection in our next few sets of autograph auctions).
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a high school teacher who taught a film class, and one day a week (and all through the summer) he ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits and one-sheets from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s, but increasingly greatly in the early 1980s, he hit on the idea of writing to famous celebrities, and enclosing an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He often was able to locate an 8x10 still from his collection that was from a really good movie from that star, or one that had a really good image of that star. In a relatively small number of cases, he did not have a still in his collection to send, so he bought a reproduction from a photo shop, and sent that instead, which is why some of the items that have this notation on them are reproductions.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the mid-1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775