Hollywood and Entertainment

Cecil B. DeMille Hollywood producer and director, signed personal check 6/16/52 with a reproduction of a Karsch portrait. Professionally framed.

Will Hays – Postmaster General under Harding and then president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America – now the Motion Picture Association of America. Hays signs a cover letter sending an autographed photo (not present) to Prof. Charles Rice of Mount Union College. To save Hollywood film production from government censorship over morals and decency Hays led the creation of self-regulated standards on production --The Hays Code. As the protector of American virtues his code became known as the censorship committee. It was the forerunner of the movie ratings system now used. [#4482]

Three page ALS April 30,1889 from Castle Hill in Virginia. In response to a request for a signed photograph the then popular author explains that her supply is gone. In another hand is an initialed postscript that she will send the photograph when she gets a new supply but the photographer is a “crank” and apparently not very good at filling orders. There is some toning to the letter with mounting remnants on along the fold of the 2nd and 3rd pages.

Rives was an author and poet whose fame and popularity may have been driven by her personality as much as her writing. Her first marriage, to a descendent of John Jacob Astor ended in divorce and her second marriage was to the artist Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy of Russian nobility.

Rives’ godfather was Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Her father Alfred was a Colonel in the Confederate Army and the Chief of Engineers to Lee. She eventually inherited and lived in Castle Hill, a plantation near Monticello which is now listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.

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