Scarce vintage 8x10-inch matte-finish portrait, boldly signed and inscribed in blue fountain pen in the 1930s. A tiny bit of paper loss to the bottom left-hand corner tip and a minute brown stain to the border in one spot; otherwise, in fine condition for its age. Gruff character actor Charles Bickford was a man to be reckoned with:  At age nine, he was tried and acquitted for the attempted shooting of a motorist who had run over his dog; he spent his teen years as a vagabond, making ends meet by keeping company with a burlesque dancer; he fought endlessly with Louis B. Mayer following a contract with MGM; and he was mauled by a lion while filming East of Java in 1935, resulting in extensive neck scarring.  Perhaps understandably of a brusque and cranky disposition, he established himself as one of Hollywood's most distinguished character actors, earning three Oscar nods for a terrific body of work which included Greta Garbo’s Anna Christie (1930), The Squaw Man (1931), The Farmer Takes A Wife (1935), The Plainsman (1936), Of Mice And Men (1939), Reap The Wild Wind (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Duel in the Sun (1946), Johnny Belinda (1948), A Star is Born (1954), The Big Country (1958), and Days of Wine and Roses (1962).

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