A page from an autograph album signed with a fountain pen by Don Ameche (1908-1993), the Oscar-winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years. After playing in college shows, repertory theatre, and vaudeville, he became a major radio star in the early 1930s, which led to the offer of a movie contract from 20th Century Fox in 1935. Brought to Hollywood by 20th-Century Fox producer Darryl Zanuck, Ameche played mostly romantic leads paired with many of the top female stars of the era. He was Alice Faye's leading man in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), then played a real-life figure, Stephen Foster, in Swanee River (1939). He did a third biopic, Lillian Russell (1940) with Faye, and was top billed in a war film, Four Sons (1940). He also starred in two popular musicals, Down Argentine Way (1940), which helped make stars of Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda, and Moon Over Miami (1941), also with Grable. In 1940, he was voted the 21st-most-popular star in Hollywood. In the 1950s he worked on Broadway and in television, and was the host of NBC's International Showtime from 1961 to 1965. Returning to film work in his later years, Ameche enjoyed a fruitful revival of his career, beginning with his role as a villain in Trading Places (1983). He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cocoon (1985).