Classic Entertainment Autographs

Cat. #00199162: ESME PERCY

Vintage pink album page, measuring about 3x4-inches, boldly signed in blue ink in-person in the 1950s. In very good condition. Note that the image of the star shown here alongside the signature is not included. Fussy, frenetic English character actor Esmé Percy began his career as a distinguished thespian of the British stage, trained under Sarah Bernhardt and excelling in the works of George Bernard Shaw. The handsome looks that had so propelled him into stardom began dissipating by the 1920s, as he grew plump, broke his nose in an accident and lost his eye in an attack by a Great Dane, the latter resulting in a glass eye which often proved disconcerting to those with whom he shared scenes. (During a 1949 performance of the play "The Lady's Not for Burning," it popped out and rolled across the floor.) By the late 1930s, he was a busy character actor in British and American films, notable as Samuel Pepys in Nell Gwyn (1934), Lloyd George in Royal Cavalcade (1935); Napoleon Bonaparte in La Bailarina del Conjunto (1935); and Count Aristide Karpathy in Pygmalión (1938), a role written for him by Shaw himself. He also appeared in Asesinato (1930), an early Alfred Hitchcock film, and the horror masterpiece Dead of Night (1945), as the antiques dealer who sells Googie Withers her horribly haunted mirror.