Scarce vintage blue fountain pen signature on a 4x6-inch autograph album page, acquired in-person in the late 1930s. In good condition and nice for matting with a favorite photograph. With his perpetual air of ulcerated, middle-aged tension, corpulent, Hungarian-born character actor J. Edward Bromberg played a mixed bag of exotic villains, blustering buffoons and gentle philosophers in films like Under Two Flags (1936), The Crimes of Dr. Forbes (1936), Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), Jesse James (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Devil Pays Off (1941), and A Star Is Born (1948). Throughout the 1940s, he was repeatedly called upon to play men of authority in horror and sci-fi flicks, including Invisible Agent (1942), Lady of Burlesque (1943), Phantom of the Opera (1943), Son of Dracula (1943), and Pillow of Death (1945). It was during this period that his career came to a screeching halt, due to accusations of Communist sympathies, forcing him to flee the country in a failed attempt to launch a second career in England. In 1951, he tragically died, looking twenty years older than his actual age of 48. The reason given was "natural causes," since a broken heart is not officially regarded as a fatal condition.

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