[Rarebooks] fa: 1930s GUESTBOOK of Film Director EDWARD SEDGWICK - Jean Hersholt (bibliophilic interest), Jack Haley, William "Billy" Haines, Sid Grauman, Charlie Ruggles etc.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

And now for something completely different...

Auction ending Sunday, August 11. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/kxtt6aa

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Visitors' Autograph Book from the Beverly Hills home of film director Edward Sedgwick and wife Ebba. Thick 6" x 9" blank guestbook with dozens of inscriptions and signatures of Hollywood types on 50+ leaves, most dating from 1935-37, with a few slightly later (the last is dated 1944). Covers missing, the first leaf loose, some modest browning to the leaves, otherwise in very good condition.

Edward Sedgwick (1889-1953) began as a child actor in a family vaudeville act, the Sedgwick Comedy Company, later the Five Sedgwicks, with his parents and two twin sisters. First appearing onscreen in 1915 in short comedies, by the early 1920s he was directing serials and westerns, first at Fox, then Universal, and is credited with developing both Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson as western stars. While at Universal, he was called in to finish Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera (1925) when director Rupert Julian walked off the picture. He moved on to MGM (1926-32), where he directed Buster Keaton in seven films , including his last two silents, The Cameraman (1928) and Spite Marriage (1929), and where he was instrumental in making William "Billy" Haines a star. With his wife occasionally acting as scenarist (under her maiden name Ebba Havez), Sedgwick continued to turn out comedies through the 1930s and 40s, but with diminishing results; like his good friend Keaton, he was widely considered a relic of a bygone era. Near the end of his career he worked as a gag writer for Red Skelton. He is credited with discovering and encouraging the screwball talents of Lucille Ball in the 1930s, and many years later was an executive with her production company, Desilu Productions, and even made a cameo appearance on "I Love Lucy," an episode of which was the last thing he ever directed (1953). "Ball never forgot the man who was so instrumental in giving her a break in the movies, and after he died she took his widow Ebba into her home…" (IMDB).

This guestbook, which opens with a loving dedication to his wife Ebba, dates from what was the beginning of the long, slow twilight of Sedgwick's career, though he might not have been aware of it: still living in Beverly Hills, he had just finished directing the comedy Mister Cinderella (released in 1936), starring Jack Haley and Betty Furness, and may have  felt his fortunes were on an upswing. The book is inscribed by a number of people who worked with him on that film, as well as by many figures, notable and obscure, from earlier in his career, assorted bit players and eccentric characters, friends, family, etc. A unique and fascinating glimpse of Hollywood's Golden Age as lived by those on the fringes of the klieg lights' glare.

With appearances by…

WILLIAM "BILLY" HAINES: film star turned successful interior decorator and gay civil rights icon; starred in Sedgwick's Slide, Kelly, Slide and Spring Fever (1927). At the height of his career, Haines renounced movie stardom rather than publicly disavow his homosexuality. In 1935 he officially retired from acting and switched careers, as he notes here in his inscription: "'Slide, Kelly, Slide' — from actor to interior decorator…" Also present, though discreetly appearing several pages later, is Haines's longtime companion and partner JIMMIE SHIELDS (they were together nearly 50 years). Shields has added a one-word note: "Cohen —!!!", presumably an inside joke (a reference to Mickey Cohen? Harry Cohn?).

JACK HALEY: star of Sedgwick's Mister Cinderella (1936) and shortly to achieve film immortality as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Inscription signed "Jack + Flo Haley."

CHARLIE RUGGLES: prolific character actor (Love Me Tonight, Trouble in Paradise, Bringing Up Baby, The Bullwinkle Show, etc.) Coincidentally (or maybe not) appearing on a page nearby is MARION LA BARBA, world flyweight boxing champ Fidel La Barba's soon-to-be ex-wife, whom Ruggles would marry in 1942.

EDWARD EVERETT HORTON: comedic character actor par excellence (Holiday, The Front Page, Trouble in Paradise, Top Hat, Lost Horizon, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Rocky & Bullwinkle, etc.); appeared in Sedgwick's The Poor Rich (1934).

SID GRAUMAN: showman and theatre owner, founder and managing director of Grauman's Chinese Theatre as well as the Egyptian Theatre, both still landmarks on Hollywood Boulevard.
JEAN HERSHOLT: Danish-born film actor (Greed, Grand Hotel, Heidi) whose efforts on behalf of sick and needy members of the film industry led to the creation of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Motion Picture Academy. Hersholt was also a noted book collector and Ed and Ebba Sedgwick were clearly fellow enthusiasts, as attested by Hersholt's lengthy inscription wishing his hosts "a lot of first editions in A no. 1 conditions, such as a first folio, the Guttenburg Bible, Alice in Wonderland, Omar Kuyham[sic], and a few other high spots..."

R. H. BURNSIDE: artistic director of the New York Hippodrome from 1908-1923, as well as a composer, playwright, theatre and film director (Manhattan, 1924). He may well have known Sedgwick from the latter's early vaudeville days.

ARTHUR TREACHER: perennial English butler-type (Thank You, Jeeves, The Little Princess, Mary Poppins, The Merv Griffin Show); appeared (as a butler) in Sedgwick's Mister Cinderella. He signs with his nickname "Pip" alongside an inscription by Alice M. Treacher (his mother? first wife?).

ROBERT YOUNG: bland leading man who found greater success in television (Father Knows Best, Marcus Welby, M.D.); starred in Sedgwick's baseball mystery Death on the Diamond (1934). Inscription signed, probably by his wife, "Betty & Bob Young."

COUNT SIGVARD BERNADOTTE: former Swedish royalty, art director and industrial designer; oldest living great-grandchild of Queen Victoria. Born a prince, he forsook his royal title when he married a German commoner, Erika Patzek, who (as Erika Bernadotte) also inscribes and signs a warm message to Ed and Ebba.

CLAUS SPRECKELS, JR.: sugar fortune heir.

JO SWERLING: eminent screenwriter (It's a Wonderful Life, Pride of the Yankees, Gone With the Wind—one of many uncredited contributors—Leave Her to Heaven, Guys and Dolls, etc.) Continuing the book-collecting theme introduced by Jean Hersholt (see above), Swerling signs himself "Jo (Moby Dick) Swerling" and his wife Flo compliments Ed and Ebba in bibliophilic terms: "fresh as they day they were issued — pristine — superb — fly-leaves and back-strips not mended..."

RICHARD FLUORNOY: screenwriter; wrote Sedgwick's Mister Cinderella as well as numerous other films (A Night to Remember, The More the Merrier, etc).

EDGAR ALLAN WOOLF: screenwriter (Mask of Fu Manchu, The Wizard of Oz).

LOLA LANE: actress (Marked Woman, Hollywood Hotel, Torchy Blane in Panama); née Dorothy Mulligan and like Sedgwick a former vaudevillian, she writes: "as one Mulligan to Two Sedgwicks..."

J. ALLEN BOONE: early film producer who went on to write several semi-loony spiritualist books about nonverbal communication with animals and his deep friendship with the German shepherd Strongheart, one of the earliest canine film stars.

EILEEN SEDGWICK: Edward's sister and a silent film actress; a loving inscription signed "Eileen, Clarence [Hutson, her husband] & Daughter."

RAY MAYER AND EDITH MAYER [née Evans]: in the 1920s they appeared together as Evans and Mayer in vaudeville and in Vitaphone shorts; he went on to a career as a character actor (Seven Keys to Baldpate, Follow the Fleet).

WALTER C. KELLY: character actor, played the title role in Sedgwick's 1935 film The Virginia Judge.

JACK TATE: aviator & naval officer; with two entries. The first (ca. 1935-6) signed "'that aviator' Jack Tate", refers to Sedgwick's 1935 film Murder in the Fleet and reads in part, "as the Admiral commanding the U.S.S. Carolina he [Sedgwick] was better than I was as a motion picture impresario." The second, dated Feb. 20 1944 and signed "Jack Tate Capt. USN - Atoll, Island and Air Commander Tarawa," consists of a memorial prose poem "Indited to the Marines of the Second Marine Division who fell at Tarawa." This is the last entry in the book.

ASSORTED BIT PLAYERS: John Hyams (Mister Cinderella, Murder in the Fleet); James (Jack?) Norton; Tom Dugan (Mister Cinderella, To Be or Not to Be); Harry Clark, etc.  

And many more...