Another sartorial star, also associated with shirts, here is Frederick John Perry, or Fred Perry, who was born on May 18, 1909 in Stockport, England.
He was a triple champion, and founded his fashion empire in 1952 on a tennis shirt he designed himself. He chose for his emblem a laurel wreath, as sported in Ancient Greek mythology by the god Apollo. Later on, laurel wreaths were also given out to the victorious competitors at the Olympic Games.
After being a very eligible bachelor for many years, with some high profile companions, including Marlene Dietrich, he became engaged in 1934 to an actress called Mary Lawson, but this did not survive his relocation to the USA.
A year later he met the American film star Helen Vinson, on the S S Berengaria. You can see them together, with rather fixed smiles, on card 39/50 of Stephen Mitchell`s "A Gallery of 1935" . The text there tells us that they were married in September1935 in New York. It does not tell that this was her second marriage. Again it did not last, and they divorced in 1940.
He married again, twice, in fairly quick succession, then after a bit of a break to lick his wounds he found happiness with a lady who was actually the sister of Patricia Roc. They were married in 1952 and remained so right until his death in 1995, in Australia.
This set might be anonymous, but all is revealed when you find the album. Luckily for us, some of the sportsmen featured in this set were footballers, eight out of the thirty-two cards, and so you can read more about it at Football Cartophilic Information Exchange/Amalg.Sportsmen
That let me find it in our British Trade Indexes too. It turns out that it is catalogued in our original British Trade Index part I but at the back of the book, in the Z numbers, in the section for “Cards without reference to commodity or periodical”, as :
SET ZB7-20. SPORTSMEN OF THE WORLD. Sm. 69 x 39. Unnd. (32). Back illustrated at Fig.ZB7-20. Issued in strips of 4 with “The Champion”. Special album issued.
It then lists the sportsmen, so a scan is called for ...
I have to admit that I did not discover this until I got to British Trade Index part II, where it lists it in between AMC-34 and AMC-35. The text there states :
“THE CHAMPION” ALBUM OF SPORTSMEN OF THE WORLD. 20 page album with spaces for 32 cards corner mounted. See set ZJ7-20 in RB.25
In our updated British Trade Index the set has been restored to the Amalgamated stable, and it is catalogued as :
SPORTSMEN OF THE WORLD (C). 1934. 69 x 39. Unnd (32). Issued in strips of 4 or 5, with special album titled “The `Champion`Album of Sportsmen of the World”. Anonymous full text backs. See HA-68.
This HA number refers to the Handbook, but it only lists the cards as I have scanned above, rather than saying which of the cards were strips of four and which in strips of five.
Now five of these complete and uncut strips of four cards are actually shown at the Football Cartophilic Information Exchange/WS, but below them are two rows and a total of eight loose cards, which is kind of confusing. To me anyway.