Jenkins, Florence Foster. (1868-1944)
Signed Photograph "Souvenir of ‘The Laughing Song’"
8 x 10 inch photograph with the raised stamp lower right of Atlantic Photos (Atlantic City, NJ) showing Jenkins on the boardwalk, wearing a bucket hat festooned with appliquéd palm trees, and one of the dowdy coats with fake fur collars for which she was notorious among her circle, her purse cradled under her left arm.Inscribed and signed in black ink to a light area at the lower left: “To Lula Baird Souvenir of ‘The Laughing Song’ November 3 rd , 1929 Florence Foster Jenkins." Two tiny pin holes and moderate staining to border, light creasing and silvering, else fine. An extraordinary rarity, one of only a handful of signed photographs of Jenkins ever to appear on the market, and a particularly fine fully signed example referencing one her most popular hits, Adele's 'Laughing Song' from Die Fledermaus. A recording of Jenkins singing this may be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMu9PKWthLE
Florence Foster Jenkins, an American girl born in 1868 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to a well-to-do family, has become a legend as “the world’s worst opera singer.” She made some vanity 78 rpm records for the Mel-o-tone label during World War Two, and in October 1944 hired Carnegie Hall for a recital. The bad reviews that resulted from that recital were said to break her heart and she died a few weeks later at age 76, but the recordings have kept her name and her art alive. In recent years there have been several plays about her, and this year there are three full-length movies. The first, a French comedy-drama titled “Marguerite” was released earlier this year. A second produced in Britain and starring Meryl Streep as Jenkins will be released in the USA in a few weeks, and later this year a German docu-drama starring soprano Joyce di Donato as Jenkins will premiere. Two different full-length biographies of Jenkins have appeared within the last weeks in England, by Darryl Bullock and the other by Jasper Rees. However, autograph material and other historical memorabilia of Jenkins is of the utmost rarity. (13895)
Classical Music Opera Signed Photograph