Excellent, unusually early borderless 7x8-inch matte-finish sepia-tone portrait, signed in black fountain pen in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In good condition. Nasal-sounding, haughty, patrician-looking British character actor Mellville Cooper first established himself on the English stage, then transitioning into Hollywood films in the 1930s and making a splash in the swashbuckling comedy The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Arguably his most famous role came in 1938, when he starred in the sweeping action film The Adventures of Robin Hood, playing the gutless High Sheriff of Nottingham opposite the dashing Errol Flynn and the nefarious Basil Rathbone. Cooper went on to unforgettable roles in films like Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and Father of the Bride (1950).

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