Exceedingly rare-- this is just our second example in 38 years-- vintage black fountain pen signature on a 2x5-inch pink autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1940s. In good condition and ideal for matting with a favorite photograph. Scrawny, weasel-like character actor Erville Alderson spent his early years appearing in silent pictures for D.W. Griffith, with key roles in The White Rose (1932), America (1924), Isn't Life Wonderful (1924), and Sally of the Sawdust (1926). During the talkie era, he played a mixed bag of kindly and vile personages, often in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the corrupt handwriting expert in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), a shopkeeper in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Stonewall Jackson in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940),Jefferson Davis in Santa Fe Trail (1940), and Dr. Williams in The Black Cat (1941). He also popped up in two installments of the Charlie Chan film series.

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