Uncommon vintage inscribed blue fountain pen signature on a 4 x 5.5-inch pink autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1930s. In good condition, with the lower edge very slight trimmed. 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.

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