When I started work on my Garden of Allah novels series, I gave no thought to the people who I might meet along the way. Case in point: I received an email from the son of director Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels (1941) The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)) He was doing research for a book about his father and came across my article “Spotlight on The Players” about the Sunset Strip nightclub Sturges opened during the summer of 1940. One email led to another and Tom Sturges ended up sending me a check his father wrote in 1946 as a way of saying thank you for the respectful way I wrote about his father. As a huge fan of this era, the fact that I could own this small nugget of Hollywood history amazes me.
Tom Sturges’s book is called THE LAST YEARS OF PRESTON STURGES, HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST WRITER-DIRECTOR by Nick Smedley and Tom Sturges, with a Foreword by Peter Bogdanovich
Published by Intellect (U.K.) and the University of Chicago Press (USA) and due for publication in spring 2019, it is based on extensive research in the previously closed private family papers of Preston Sturges, including his diaries, private correspondence, Ideas Book, unpublished screenplays and other memorabilia.
When I started work on my Garden of Allah novels series, I gave no thought to the people who I might meet along the way. Case in point: I received an email from the son of director 
Just for interest, $100 in 1946 is worth about $1,300 today (in 2018). See: https://www.officialdata.org/1946-dollars-in-2014
And he made it out to cash!
Did Preston endorse it (for the bank) or was it endorsed by someone else as a sort of way for him to get a loan from a friend?
I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine!