Scarce vintage glossy 5x7-inch black and white portrait, boldly signed in blue fountain pen in the late 1940s or early 1950s. In good condition, with faint handling bends to to upper left-hand and bottom right-hand corner tips, and some light silvering to the top of his hair, invisible when the photo is viewed head-on. 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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