US POSTAL HISTORY BLOG

They did it before and they’ve done it again.
 
Who are ‘they,’ and what did they do? ‘They’ is the United States Post Office and what they’ve done is airbrushed a cigarette out of Bette Davis’ hand on the new stamp issue bearing her likeness.
 
The commemorative issue is the fourteenth in the Legends of Hollywood series and honors the 100th anniversary of the screen legend’s birth. The stamp features Davis in an iconic pose, but without her iconic smoke. A look at the image reveals that her hand looks awkward and unnatural and it is easy to see that her fingers were originally holding a cigarette.

It was not until 1995 that the USPS issued a block of 20 first-class letter stamps with the theme “Civil War, 1861-1865, The War Between the States.” The series honors men and women on both sides of the conflict including Confederate General Robert Edward Lee, Union Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, Union Nurse Clara Barton, and Confederate Nurse Phoebe Yates Levy Pember. Famous places as well as famous faces are part of the historic issue with designs featuring Gettysburg and Shiloh. You can see the stamps at the USPS site: http://www.usps.com/images/stamps/95/civilwar.gif

Nicknamed ‘the Prexies’ by collectors the Presidential Issue is a series of definitive postage stamps issued in the United States in 1938. The unique collection features all 29 U.S. presidents from George Washington through Calvin Coolidge. The Presidents are depicted as small busts printed on solid-color designs on stamps valued up to 50-cents. The designs are black on white with colored lettering for the $1, $2, and $5 values. Many irregular values were included simply to ensure so that each Commander-in-Chief had a stamp of his own. Additional stamps depicted Benjamin Franklin on a half-cent stamp, Martha Washington on a one-and-a-half-cent stamp, and the White House, on a stamp with a value of four-and-a-half cents.

And while George Washington may have been our nation’s first President, he was not the nation’s first famous face to be pictured on a stamp. Or, to be more accurate, he was not the ONLY first face to launch a thousand letters. The honor of being commemorated on those first stamps is shared by first President George Washington and first colonial Postmaster Ben Franklin.
 
U.S. Postmaster General Cave Johnson selected Franklin and Washington to be on the stamps and the firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson to create them.
 
Best known for their work engraving banknotes, they proposed printing engraved stamps in their best style of line engraving in a two-color process. The cost: 25-cents per thousand stamps. Johnson learned that a one-color process would reduce the cost-per-thousand by a nickel, and the frugal Postmaster General authorized the cheaper printing.
 
Government spending stayed low when rather than creating brand new dies for the Franklin and Washington images, the engraving firm used stock dies that were already on the presses for banknotes and engraved frames. After the dies were completed, several trial colors were prepared and submitted to Postmaster General Johnson. He chose brown for the five-cent stamp and black for the ten-cent.
 
On June 26, 1847, the printers advised Postmaster General Johnson that 200,000 Washington ten-cent stamps and 600,000 Franklin five-cent stamps were ready for delivery. On July 1, 1847, the first federal United States postage stamps were issued in New York City.
 
No cover is known to have been posted at New York on July 1. The earliest known cover bearing one of these stamps was postmarked at New York City on July 2, 1847, although the stamps were probably purchased on the first day of issue.