Three TLSs, two signed "Edna" and one signed "Ferb," each one page, personal letterhead, all making reference to Hollywood icons. One, in part: "I have never been moved by the designation 'great story teller.' My books are not just great story telling. They are people and manners and mores and passions and national psychoses (for goodness sakes!)—strained through the peculiar receptor that is called, for everybody's convenience, 'Edna Ferber'…If these unique emotions and sensibilities and spinsterish inclinations were not involved, then Show Boat and Cimarron and so on and so forth would not have survived these decades. Besides, and this point seems to have been missed entirely, my novels are novels of protest. They happen to involve large canvasses, but there is more dimension I hope than size. I too was inutterably felled by the waste of Jimmy Dean. It was beyond my power to fathom because he was so fetching and unrestrained in his openness to life. And all those little creatures who still contact me for memento mori should have perished instead. IF I had had a son, I would have wished for someone just like him."
The second, in part: "Martha also wrote to ask about Kate Hepburn, to whom I spoke. Kate is going through a shattering period with Tracy's declining health. He is invaded by every dread disease known to mortals. Her grace, under even this sort of pressure, is inspiring. She was all sails when we spoke though I could feel that she was vanquishing every kind of fear and tear. I always found him a bit too gruff and unpolished and, even on one or two occasions, downright rude to me and Kate. But he has been the center of her valiant and stylish life and she will suffer enormously when his time arrives."
The third, in part: "Montreux was even better than I expected. For those who enjoy clean air, beautiful vistas, gorgeous people, and excellence in high places it is paradise. I saw Noel but we didn't manage much chat. Everyone he knows drinks and talks too much, and they were all gathering for somebody's birthday. Chaplin seemed suddenly, depressingly his age although the minions around him were taking pains to cover for him. His senses are simply not as slick and reliable as they once were…The world is getting odder and older. I have fallen freshly out of love with this filthy city. And the Fire Department is plainly conspiring to make me deaf and mean." In fine condition, with trimmed edges.
