Autograph Hound Saturday once again. Kind of snuck up on me.
I mentioned the other week that Brian Leno has been collecting signatures like hell recently — on top of collecting like hell his whole life — and he’s here today to unholster a few new items from his horde of John Hancocks:
I’ve been going a little nuts lately with the autographs, Don.
Got Freddie Mills in the mail yesterday.
Picked up a Delos Lovelace, the guy who wrote the movie adaptation of King Kong back in the thirties, and on the same theme I got Helen Mack, the lady from Son of Kong — she also starred in She, alongside Randolph Scott.
I’m waiting for a Malcolm McDowell signed 8×10 from A Clockwork Orange.
Also picked up a Frank E. Schoonover auto — did the great dust jacket for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. Tough to find at a decent price.
Right now I have my beady eyes on Valerie Hobson, Baroness Frankenstein from The Bride of Frankenstein. She was married to John Profumo — remember him and the big political sex scandal in England in the sixties?
For all you sports fans I picked up some handwriting examples of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Nothing major there, but they will do until I can grab their autographs, which because they are so goddamned expensive, could take a while.
The boxer in the shot above of course is Freddie Mills. The Secret Life of Freddie Mills, by Michael Litchfield, is a very good book and I recommend it. Litchfield delves into all the murky business of Freddie and the infamous Kray Brothers, and the Jack the Stripper case. How much is believable is up to the reader.
And speaking of the Krays I received Reg Kray’s A Way of Life in the mail today from the U.K. I was told it was signed and I took the seller’s word for it and let that be a lesson to me. It looks like an authentic signature, but when it’s compared to other copies of the same book it’s revealed to be a facsimile.
I should have tracked down other “signed” copies and I’d have seen right away what it was. I didn’t do my homework on that one, which I usually do.
Let my guard down and got banged with a left hook.
Still it was cheap enough that I won’t kick up a fuss. Live and learn, and I’m sure the book will still be an interesting one.
