Cat. #0058831: MONTY WOOLLEY

Scarce vintage inscribed black fountain pen signature on a 4 x 5-inch light grey autograph album page, acquired in-person in the early 1940s and decorated with a newspaper image of him in his most celebrated role. In fine condition, but priced to reflect a square-shared patch of toning left by a newspaper clipping affixed to the prior page in the album and a few tears to the leaf, not affecting the writing itself. Eccentric, blustery man-of-means Monty Woolley was lured by family friend Cole Porter to the stage, where he found success in typecast portrayals of snobbish intellectuals, dismissive authority figures and bombastic crank pots. Following a knockout run as the spectacularly insufferable Sheridan Whiteside in the 1939 Broadway production of “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Woolley was invited to recreate the role onscreen in 1941, launching a 14-year career as a Hollywood character actor. When Woolley felt like it, he could be an actor of great range and depth, as with his Oscar-nominated performances in The Pied Piper (1942) and Since You Went Away (1946). He almost uniformly played himself, however, stealing scenes in films like Night and Day (1946) and The Bishop’s Wife (1947) by doing little more than patronizing and insulting plebian pests at every turn.