RARE "42nd Street" Una Merkel Hand Written Note For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "42nd Street" Una Merkel Hand Written Note. 

ES-1708

Merkel was born in Kentucky and acted on

stage in New York in the 1920s. She went to Hollywood in 1930 and became a

popular film actress. Two of her best-known performances are in the films 42nd Street and Destry Rides Again.

She won a Tony Award in 1956

and was nominated for an Oscar in 1961. Merkel was born in Covington, Kentucky, to

Arno Merkel and Bessie Phares,[1] but in her early childhood, she

lived in many of the Southern United States due

to her father's job as a traveling salesman. At the age of 15, she and her

parents moved to Philadelphia. They stayed

there a year or so before settling in New York City, where she began attending the Alviene School of

Dramatic Art. Because of her strong resemblance to actress Lillian Gish, Merkel was offered a part as Gish's youngest

sister in a silent film called World Shadows. Unfortunately, the

public never saw the film because funding for it dried up, and it was never

completed. Merkel went on to appear in a few silent movies, several of them for the Lee Bradford

Corporation. She also appeared in the two-reel Love's Old Sweet Song (1923),

which was made by Lee and starred Louis Wolheim and Helen Weir. Not making much of a mark

in films, Merkel turned her attention to the theater and found work in several

important plays on Broadway. Her biggest triumph was in Coquette (1927),

which starred her idol, Helen Hayes. Invited to

Hollywood by famous director D.W. Griffith to play Ann Rutledge in his film Abraham Lincoln (1930),

Merkel became a big success in sound films. During the 1930s, she became a

popular second lead in a number of films, usually playing the wisecracking best

friend of the heroine, supporting actresses such as Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, and Eleanor Powell. With

her Kewpie-doll looks, strong Southern accent, and wry line delivery, Merkel left

her mark on scores of films in the 1930s. She played Sam Spade's secretary in the original 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon.

Merkel was from 1932 to 1938, appearing in as many as 12 films in a year, often on

loan-out to other studios. She was also often cast as leading lady

opposite Jack Benny, Harold Lloyd, Franchot Tone, and Charles Butterworth,

among others. In 42nd Street (1933),

Merkel played a streetwise show girl who was Ginger Rogers' character's buddy. In the famous "Shuffle

Off to Buffalo" number, Merkel and Rogers sang the verse: "Matrimony

is baloney. She'll be wanting alimony in a year or so./Still they go and

shuffle, shuffle off to Buffalo." Merkel appeared in both of The Merry Widow,

playing different roles. One of her most famous roles was in the Western

comedy Destry Rides Again (1939),

in which her character, Lily Belle, gets into a famous "cat-fight"

with Frenchie (Marlene Dietrich) over the

possession of her husband's trousers, won by Frenchie in a crooked card game.

She played the elder daughter to the W. C. Fields character, Egbert Sousé, in the 1940

film The Bank Dick. Her

film career went into decline during the 1940s, although she continued working

in smaller productions. In 1950, she starred with William Bendix in the baseball comedy Kill the Umpire, which was a surprise hit. She made a

comeback as a middle-aged woman playing mothers and maiden aunts, and in 1956

won a Tony Award for her role on Broadway in The Ponder

Heart, adapted from the novella of the same name. She had a major part in the MGM 1959

film The Mating Game as Paul Douglas's character's

wife and Debbie Reynolds'

character's mother, and was nominated for an Academy

Award for Best Supporting Actress in Summer and Smoke (1961).

She was also featured as Brian Keith's character's housekeeper, Verbena, in the Walt Disney comedy The Parent Trap in

1961. Her final film role was opposite Elvis Presley in Spinout (1966).