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Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian (now Romania) actor from the 1920s to the 1970s. He was the 1924 Olympic swimming champion, and he set a number of world records, and he never lost a race. In 1940, at the age of 36, he broke his own world record in the 100-yard freestyle, which he had set 13 years earlier, and which stood for another 4 years before finally being broken after 17 years! But of course, he is best remembered for playing Tarzan starting in 1932 (in "Tarzan the Ape Man", followed by "Tarzan and His Mate", and many others!), and later he starred as Jungle Jim in the 1950s AND Maureen O'Sullivan was born in Roscommon, Ireland in 1911. She went to the same convent school in Dublin that Vivien Leigh attended at the same time. After graduating, she began working with the poor, but happened to meet American director Frank Borzage, who invited her to take a screen test, and she was given a part in a Hollywood movie. She made 9 movies for four studios, and then signed a contract with MGM, where she became a protege of Irving Thalberg. He chose her to be Jane in Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932, and also gave her prominent roles in other major MGM productions, including in The Thin Man, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Day at the Races, and many others, including two Tarzan sequels. In 1936 Thalberg died, and she received less important roles at MGM, although they still put her in lots of movies. She married Australian writer John Farrow in 1936, and they had their first child in 1939, which slowed her pace of movies, but she still appeared in three more Tarzan movies, and a few others. In 1942 they had their second child, and her husband contracted typhoid during the war, and she retired to take care of her husband and children (they would go on to have seven children in all). Her final movie of this period was fittingly a Tarzan movie, Tarzan's New York Adventure, and it was one of the most enjoyable of the series. Her husband became a director, and she came out of retirement to appear in his The Big Clock in 1948, and a few other movies, plus some TV appearances. Her husband passed away in 1963, and she continued doing some acting. Three of her daughters became actresses, with Mia and Tisa the best known. A fourth daughter, Prudence, was the inspiration for the Beatles song, Dear Prudence! Maureen O'Sullivan remarried in 1983, and passed away in 1998. She will forever be best remembered as the original Jane in the Tarzan movies (she was SO popular in that role that Jane was written out of the next few Tarzan movies, because MGM thought the public would not accept another actress in that role!). But she was also one of MGM's leading female stars of the 1930s, appearing in almost 50 movies between 1930 and 1942!

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by BOTH Johnny Weissmuller AND Maureen O'Sullivan! Also note that this still measures 8 1/4" x 10" [21 x 25 cm].

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 213 more items (plus signed index cards that have a different note on those)!
     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 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 photo (and the vast majority of the other photos 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.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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