GAYNOR JANET: (1906-1984) American Actress, Academy Award winner. Gaynor was the first ever recipient of a Best Actress Oscar in 1929 which was awarded for her performances in 7^th Heaven (1927), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and Street Angel (1928). This represents the only occasion when an actress has won an Oscar for multiple roles. An excellent vintage signed and inscribed sepia 8 x 10 photograph of Gaynor in a head and shoulders pose. Photograph by Max Mun Autrey. Signed in bold, dark fountain pen ink by the actress across a clear area at the base of the image. Neatly and lightly mounted to a folio page removed from an album, VG

 

The present photograph was originally included (along with thirty-six others) in a folio calf leather bound presentation album which was one of just fourteen (as far as our research indicates) that were presented to the individual members of a delegation of British journalists who visited America for a two month tour in 1928. Funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the objective of the tour was to improve Anglo-American relations and the presentation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Roosevelt Hotel on 7^th November 1928 (just over six months before the first Oscar was presented at the very same venue) was a major highlight of the tour.

  

The album from which the present photograph was extracted had been presented to F. Lawrence Johnson, a journalist associated with the Northeastern Daily Gazette, and the photograph bears an inscription to him.