Wonderful and eclectic collection of vintage Hollywood signatures and personally owned buttons, most acquired during the late 1930s, each nicely presented on individual off-white cards and sheets, almost all of the actors and actresses inscribing to Julia Shauer, many adding personal sentiments and comments, the more interesting and quirky of which are highlighted below. Signers are: John Beal; Joan Bennett (“A button a day makes a large collection”); Olympe Bradma; Charles Butterworth (“This is a button from my costume worn in the stage play ‘Sweet Adeline.’ I played with Helen Morgan and Irene Franklin and it was my best stage play to date”); Louise Campbell; Mary Carlisle; Madeleine Carroll; Ethel Clayton; Claudette Colbert; William Collier, Sr. (“This was taken from the coat I wore in the first All Star Lambs Yambol in the late nineties”); Paula Collier (sending a button “worn on a black silk frock by Parthenia Cromwell Thyson, Washington Society matron during the Lincoln administration”); Ronald Colman; Dennis Day; Albert Dekker (“from Dr. Cyclops”); Johnny Downs (“Just took this button out of my pocket. I’ll die if I get home & find I need it”); Leif Erickson; Rufe Davis (“Here’s a ‘hill-billy’ button for you”); Henry Fonda; Vera Gordon; Porter Hall (“Here’s a button that held my career by a thread—it was dangling when Bill Powell bit me in the jaw and knocked me over my chair in ‘The Thin Man’”); Edward Everett Horton (“Button, Button, you’ve got the Button!!”); John Howard; Elsie Janis (“The button is off this uniform which I wore in Hello! America—London 1918—With my gang in America 1919 and in my debut in Paris”); Dorothy Lamour (“This is a terribly risque button—I’ve heard that it wears sarongs!”); Billy Lee; Ida Lupino; Fred MacMurray; Fredric March (“from Jean (March) LaFitte ‘The Buccaneer’”); Herbert Marshall (“I don’t think the wardrobe department will miss this one”); Adolphe Menjou (“This button was on the tunic I wore during the war in 1917 in Italy and France in 1918”); Ray Milland; Dickie Moore; Lloyd Nolan; Donald O’Connor; Elizabeth Patterson (“My kingdom for a button”); Robert Preston; Anthony Quinn (“Right on the button”); George Raft; Shirley Ross (“A Hollywood button for a New York Collection”); Charlie Ruggles; Henry Stephenson; Virginia Weidler; Florence George; Bill Noe; Mary P. Parker; Paco Moreno; Georgia Coleman; Florence George; and Jean Edwards Cobb. Mild overall toning, and a bit of light soiling above sentiment, otherwise fine condition. RRAuction COA.
