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The glamour and romance of the silent film era is brought to life on a new series of 29c postage stamps drawn by legendary New York artist Al Hirschfeld.
The Silent Screen Stars stamps will be issued April 27 in San Francisco, CA, as part of the 37th annual San Francisco International Film Festival. The stars featured on the 29c stamps are Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Lon Chaney, Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert, Buster Keaton, the Keystone Cops, Harold Lloyd, Zasu Pitts and Rudolph Valentino.
Al Hirschfeld has spent the last seven decades documenting the entertainment world through his illustrations of key players in Hollywood and on Broadway. He has also kept millions of people mesmerized as they try to solve the riddles he weaves into each of his drawings.
Hidden among the lines of each Hirschfeld picture is the name "Nina." Hirschfeld has been adding this extra twist to his art since 1945, when daughter Nina was born. To the right of his signature, he tells how many Ninas he has hidden. No numeral generally indicates that there is only one Nina; if there is more than one, the number is given.
Like other classic Hirschfeld works, many of the 10 Silent Screen Stars stamps feature Ninas, but it's up to the collector to guess how many. The signature of the artist (and therefore the clue as...