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Elsa Lanchester was born in London in 1902. She was an excellent stage and screen actress, but almost all of those accomplishments have faded into obscurity, and today she is mostly remembered for two things. First, that she played both the title role (and the part of Mary Shelley) in Universal's The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. Her performance was memorable, especially her reaction when she first sees the Frankenstein monster! Second, for being the wife (for 33 years) of master actor Charles Laughton. She said she did not discover he was bisexual until two years into their marriage! They appeared in 10 films together, most notably Witness for the Prosecution and The Private Life of Henry VIII (with Laughton in the title role as Henry VIII, and Lanchester as Anne of Cleves). Some of her other movies include: Come To The Stable (nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for this film), Mary Poppins, Murder By Death, and Blackbeard's Ghost. She passed away in 1986 at the age of 84.

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by Elsa Lanchester!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In each of our last several all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed photos and miscellaneous other signed items (plus many 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 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.

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