eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Beatrice 'Bea' Arthur was an actress from the 1950s to the 2000s. She is best known for her roles as both Maude in TV's "All in the Family" and its spinoff "Maude", and also as Dorothy in TV's "The Golden Girls". Few people know this, but before she was an actress, she was one of the first women to be an active duty U.S. Marine. After serving during World War II as a typist and truck driver in the Marines, she worked her way up from private to staff sergeant when she was discharged in 1945! Arthur passed away in 2009 at the age of 86.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Bea Arthur ! Also note that this still appears in every way to be original U.S. release EXCEPT that there is one very tiny line of French type in the lower right. It reads, "IMPRIME AUX ETATS-UNIS D'AMERIQUE". A collector has told us that he believes this means the still was printed for use in areas that included French-speaking parts of Canada, but that it WAS printed in the U.S., and that makes complete sense to us (and we have seen this on stills from the 1940s through the early 2000s, so it has certainly been done for an extremely long time)! So it is an original still from , but it was printed partially for use in French-speaking Canada. If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In many of our past all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed items!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) 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 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 item (and the vast majority of the other photos and other items we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 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