Draft ALS signed “Jim,” penned on the reverse of an 8.5 x 11 TLS from director Joshua Logan, which is dated July 16, 1959. Stewart's handwritten draft of a response to John Voelker, in full: "Thank you for your kind letter. I saw 'Anatomy' when Otto ran it for all the cast and crew in Hollywood—and thought it was a fine picture. I have always found it very difficult to judge myself in a picture. But I know this—I found it a wonderful experience playing Paul Biegler—and I really got to like him. I still want to go fishing with you, and don't be too surprised if you get a call some day. Thank you again." In very good condition, with multiple folds, and some creasing and toning.
Under the pen name Robert Traver, Voelker, a justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, wrote the courtroom novel Anatomy of a Murder in 1958, with the work being adapted by Otto Preminger into an Oscar-nominated film the following year. Stewart received an Oscar nomination for his role as small-town lawyer Paul Biegler, a former district attorney who is pulled away from his retired life of fishing and piano-playing to defend a US Army Lieutenant arrested for first-degree murder. Voelker himself was an avid fisherman who, between his writing, spent seven or eight months of the year fishing or hiking in the woods. In 1995, Voelker was posthumously inducted into the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wisconsin.
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