Postal Service Honors José Ferrer on 2012 Forever Stamp


December 05, 2011 

Release No. 11-133 

  

  



José Ferrer forever stamp

WASHINGTON — José Ferrer, one of the nation’s foremost and honored actors, will be immortalized on a First-Class Forever Stamp in 2012 as the 14th luminary celebrated in the U.S. Postal Service’s Distinguished Americans series.

Considered one of the most accomplished talents of his generation, Ferrer (1912-1992) won several Tony Awards for his work on stage and performed in more than 60 movies, garnering three Academy Award nominations. He received a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Cyrano de Bergerac.

“The Postal Service is proud to honor José Ferrer on a Forever Stamp,” said Stephen Kearney, manager, Stamp Services. “A renaissance man who spoke five languages fluently, Ferrer's accomplishments extended to many areas of entertainment.”

The portrait featured on the stamp is an oil painting by Daniel Adel of Cold Spring, NY, based on a photograph of Ferrer. Adel worked under the direction of art director Antonio Alcalá of Alexandria, VA.

Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, a district of San Juan, Ferrer’s father, an attorney, moved the family to New York City when Ferrer was six years old. Always an excellent student, he passed the Princeton University entrance exam at age 15, but was considered too young to attend and spent a year in a boarding school, Le Rosey, in Switzerland. He entered Princeton at age 16 and graduated with the class of 1933. He conducted postgraduate work at Columbia University with the intention of becoming a teacher of languages. However, he had discovered his love of acting while in college, and in 1935, made his first appearance on Broadway, a one-line part in the play A Slight Case of Murder.

Customers may preview the José Ferrer stamp as well as many of next year’s other stamps on Facebook at facebook.com/USPSStamps, through mailto:Twitter@USPSstamps or on the website Beyond the Perf at beyondtheperf.com/2012-preview. Beyond the Perf is the Postal Service’s online site for background on upcoming stamp subjects, first-day-of-issue events and other philatelic news.

Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $67 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 29th in the 2010 Fortune 500. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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