Bold signature in violet fountain pen on a 3.25 x 5-inch light green sheet, acquired in-person in the 1940s and affixed to a slightly larger album page, decorated with two small images of the star. In good condition for its age, with some minor surface creases and flecks of soiling. After making his bones on the vaudeville and Broadway stages, rubber-legged Ray Bolger was signed by MGM in 1936 for a featured solo in The Great Ziegfeld. Earning $3,000 per week by the late 1930s, he could land any part he wished and balked at the part of the Tin Man in the studio's Wizard of Oz (1939), saying it was too confining for his talents. He convinced the film's Scarecrow, Buddy Ebsen, to swap roles, and the rest is movie history. Bolger's Hollywood career pretty much took second place to his Broadway work after Oz, and he garnered great critical acclaim in the musicals "Where's Charley?" (1952) and "All American" (1962).

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