Joseph Cotten and Mario Lanza Salutation Cards

I've been a fan of Salutation cards since I tracked down the variations of Andy Pafko salutation cards made somewhere between the 40's and the mid-60's. These cards were typically in arcade vending machine that would give you a card for a nickel or dime. At one of my regular Atlanta-area shows a dealer had a little stack of salutation cards for Hollywood stars. I think it had been pretty well picked through but I was surprised to find two cards of stars that are important to me.

First we have Joseph Cotten offering us "sincere good wishes." Cotten's first feature film was Citizen Kane...it's doesn't get better than that.


My favorite film with Cotten in a starring role is The Third Man, another Orson Welles classic. Turner Classic Movies made a trailer for the film for one of their airings of the movie and it gives away a lot but it is excellent.



Mario Lanza sang some of my favorite versions of Christmas classics and it's so unfortunate that he died of a pulmonary embolism at only 38 in 1959.


His voice was so strong it added something unique that I've never heard in similar performance of holiday classics. Here is Lanza singing "We Three Kings" and I will always remember the first time I heard the voice over says "and Gaspar spoke"...


Both of these cards were $1.00 but they weren't my best find from the card show. I also found some similar-in-style space/Mercury program era NASA cards from the 60's that I'll post about soon. 

Comments

Commishbob said…
Wow, these are great items. I've got baseball Exhibits but nothing touches these.