Scarce and nifty vintage 5x7-inch sepia-tone portrait, signed in blue fountain pen in the 1940s. In good condition, with gentle wear to the corner tips and a stray ink mark to the bottom border. Before his premature death of a heart attack at age 57, Edgar Barrier was a master of suave villainy in a mixed bag of period, mystery, crime, and fantasy films like Arabian Nights (1942), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), Journey Into Fear (1943), Cobra Woman (1944), Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), Macbeth (1948), The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1949), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), and Hurricane Island (1951).  He was equally adept at playing benevolent authority figures, including the policeman Raoul in the horror classic Phantom of the Opera (1943), and assorted professors and physicians in The Whip Hand (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953) and The Giant Claw (1957).

• Tweet