SIGNATURE ON A PIECE OF CARD OF AMERICAN STAGE ACTRESS MARY ANDERSON.

- An unevenly cut piece of gray card, approximately 4 inches high by 6-3/8 inches wide, is boldly signed in black ink: "Mary Anderson / 1883".the card is unevenly darkened with a crease to the bottom edge. A strip of paper adheres to the verso where the card has been removed from an album with 2 pieces of reinforcing tape on the verso's bottom edge. Good. American stage actress Mary Anderson [1859-1940] made her debut in the role of Shakespeare's Juliet at Macauley's Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, her family's home town. Further appearances at St. Louis, New Orleans and John McCullough's theatre in San Francisco led to a contract with John T. Ford. After starring as Lady Macbeth in his Washngton theatre in 1877, she began an extensive U.S. tour, culminating with a New York engagement in Edward Bulwer Lytton's "The Lady of Lyons". She immediately became popular with the public as "Our Mary" and thereafter enjoyed a twelve-year career of unbroken success in New York and on tour. After collapsing on stage from nervous exhaustion in 1889, she retired to England, married Antonio Fernando de Navarro and started a family. She resisted encouragement to return to the stage apart from some benefit performances during World War I. Between 1912 and 1918, she appeared in a number of silent films under the name Mary Navarro.…