Gæsteporten

[New York], 1993. Wooden guest book in the shape of a door, wooden metal hinges, 50 leaves sewn with pink cord, with seventy-five holograph signatures, nearly forty of which we have been able to identify. The Old Denmark was a casual restaurant, at 135 East 57th Street, and later, 113 East 65th Street, on New York's Upper East Side. A 1964 review gave the restaurant one star, and described it as "first and foremost a purveyor of Scandinavian delicacies for the retail trade, but it also boasts one table where customers may dine on Danish salads. There is a seating capacity for eight guests at a time and the table is shared by other customers. The food served consists primarily of salads such as cucumber, mushroom, crab, beet and herring, but there is also liver paté and smoked salmon..." Identified amongst the signators are: Ingrid Bergman, Louise Allbritton, Virginia Field, Mario Lanza, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich, Carl Brick, Helen Traubel, Miriam Hopkins, Elsie D. Alexander, Ruth Bryan Rohde, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert St John, Edward Arnold, Princess Revé de Bourbon, Lillian Gish, Joel Grey, Lillian Hellman, Faye Dunaway, Bill Murray, Sergio Franchi, Ron Howard, Shirley Hazzard, Gary Maddox, Garrison Keillor, and Camilla Roos. Some light soiling to pages, scuffing to the wooden doors, lacking the original "doorknob". Generally near very good.