Scarce vintage black fountain pen signature on a 4x5-inch light green autograph album page, acquired in-person in 1939 and decorated with a small magazine image. In good condition for its age, with gentle edgewear. Herman Bing was imported from Germany by close friend F.W. Murnau, with whom he worked on the script and camerawork for the silent classic Sunrise (1927). After additional production projects with John Ford and Frank Borzage, he embarked upon a new career as a comic character actor, typically cast as hotheaded Teutonic types with hilariously dense accents. Among his many memorable credits were The Great Lover (1931), Men of Chance (1931), the horror gems Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Black Cat (1934), Week-End Marriage (1932), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Tod Browning's Fast Workers (1933), Dinner at Eight (1933), The Bowery (1933), The Cat's-Paw (1934), The Mighty Barnum (1934), The Misses Stooge (1935), The Call of the Wild (1935), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Great Waltz (1938), Disney's Dumbo (1941), and Night and Day (1946). Despondent over increasing difficulty securing film roles, Bing committed suicide by gunshot in 1947, aged only 57 years. His autograph is rather elusive in any format.

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