Attempted Bloggery: An Alexander Woollcott Signed Cover

There have been many creative attempts to combine postal covers with celebrity autographs. In 1933, decades before first day covers came into their own, collector H. M. Brehm persuaded noted New Yorker critic Alexander Woollcott to sign a postal cover with a 3-cent William Penn stamp and a Grand Central Annex postmark. Brehm then added an original illustration of Woollcott and a collaged photo over the address, quite possibly his own. At this point, one wonders why the postal cover was necessary in the first place.