Scarce vintage 8x10-inch black and white glossy close-up shot, boldly signed and inscribed in black fine-tip pen in the 1970s or 1980s.  In very good condition.  After auspicious work as the Tattered Soldier in John Huston's The Red Badge of Courage (1951), cadaverous, hollow-eyed character actor Royal Dano was increasingly cast as villains in westerns, thrillers and crime flicks-- often transforming potentially commonplace bad guys into psychologically complex eccentrics.  In Johnny Guitar (1954), for example, he played Corey as a compulsive reader with a tubercular cough.  He similarly did a lot with a little when cast as the deep-brooding deputy in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955).  It was once said of the always fascinating Dano that, "with his deep, resonant speaking voice and intense eyes, he could make a recitation of the telephone book sound impressive and significant".  Some of his non-baddie characters include the prophet Elijah, who predicts the destruction of the Pequod and the death of Ahab, in Huston's Moby Dick (1956), Peter in The King of Kings (1961) and Mayor Cermak in Capone (1975).  

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