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Couture and Hollywood designer Howard Greer’s massive personal autograph album from 1927 to 1937

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia Start Price:3,000.00 USD Estimated At:3,000.00 - 5,000.00 USD
Couture and Hollywood designer Howard Greer’s massive personal autograph album from 1927 to 1937
Condition Reports: If you wish to obtain additional information on a particular lot, or cannot appear at the viewing, Profiles may provide, upon request, a condition report. We remind prospective buyers that descriptions of property are not warranted and that each lot is sold “as is” in accordance with the terms of the limited warranty. Condition reports, as other descriptions of property, are not warranted; they are only provided as a service to interested clients.
Handsome, leather-bound 8vo with decorated endpapers, 241 pp, with owner’s name embossed in gold on front cover. Legendary Hollywood and Haute-Couture designer Howard Greer (1896-1974) maintained a salon which served not only the best-dressed women (and occasionally men) of golden-age Hollywood, but the wealthy elite of its neighboring communities like Santa Barbara and Pasadena. He kept at the ready this precious document of their visits as his most prized possession, as described by him in his 1933 “Modern Screen” magazine article of intimate anecdotes about several of the most significant of his clients, an original copy of which accompanies this lot. The album begins on October 11, 1927 with Lilyan Tashman, and is followed over the next 10 years by an estimated 2000+ signatures, with just a few highlights being: Thelma Todd, Pola Negri (as Princess S. Mdivani), Mr. and Mrs. Tod Browning, Travis Banton, Walter Plunkett, Edith Head (her very first year in the business), Louise Brooks, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, James Montgomery Flagg, Carl van Vechten, Dorothy Arzner (one of Greer’s personal favorites), James Cruze, Carl Laemmle Jr., Fanny Brice, Harold Lloyd, Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Capra, Cecil Beaton, Fay Wray, Anna May Wong, Noel Coward, Katherine Hepburn (another personal favorite of Greer’s), Clara Bow, Adrian, Doris Duke, Theda Bara, Marlene Dietrich, Dorothy Parker, Al Jolson, George Bernard Shaw, Ernst Lubitsch, Myrna Loy, Simone Simon, Claudette Colbert, Basil Rathbone, Ruth (Gordon) Kanin, Ginger Rogers, Leni Riefenstahl, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Rita Hayworth, Salvador Dali, Gloria Vanderbilt, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Temple, Susan Hayward, Gypsy Rose Lee, Margaret Bourke-White, among many, many others. Judging by this extraordinary and absolutely unmatched accumulation of historic signatures (quite likely the most comprehensive of its type in existence), any woman who was anyone during this time found her way to Greer’s salon, not only from Hollywood but from the far reaches of the earth. Slight bumping and flecking to extremes, otherwise beautifully preserved and protected from abuse, Very Fine.