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Bessie Love was an actress from the 1910s to the 1980s. She was born Juanita Horton, and she was a beautiful Texas girl with luxurious hair, and her mother sent her to Hollywood in 1915 (when she was 17) and she was hired by D.W. Griffith, who gave her her new name and put her in his movies, including a small role in Intolerance in 1916. She became a major silent star, and is likely best remembered today for her starring role in The Lost World, the 1925 movie made by the producer/director team of Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, with great special effects by Willis H. O'Brien (those three would reunite 8 years later for an even bigger hit, King Kong!). Miss Love was one of the few major silent stars who successfully made the transition to sound, starring in The Broadway Melody, and being nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for that movie. She starred in many other early talkies. In 1929 she married a brother of director Howard Hawks, and in 1932 they had a child. Soon after she moved to England and mostly retired, getting divorced in 1935. But she continued making movies all the way to 1983, and she passed away in 1986, at the age of 87. Some of her movies include: The Broadway Melody, Barefoot Contessa, and Rubber Tires

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by Bessie Love!

Note that this autographed 8x10 is part of a remarkable new collection we have been consigned, and we are auctioning nearly 500 items from this collection in this set of auctions (we will have more from this collection in our next few sets of autograph auctions).
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a high school teacher who taught a film class, and one day a week (and all through the summer) he ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits and one-sheets from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s, but increasingly greatly in the early 1980s, he hit on the idea of writing to famous celebrities, and enclosing an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He often was able to locate an 8x10 still from his collection that was from a really good movie from that star, or one that had a really good image of that star. In a relatively small number of cases, he did not have a still in his collection to send, so he bought a reproduction from a photo shop, and sent that instead, which is why some of the items that have this notation on them are reproductions.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the mid-1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775