Vintage 8x10-inch sepia-tone portrait by Witzel Studios, signed and inscribed in fountain pen in the late 1920s.  In very fine condition.  The major silent era star began his career as an artist's model and was once dubbed the "handsomest man in the world."  He played romantic leads in scores of films and became immensely popular with female viewers, until it was revealed that he was secretly married to his frequent costar, Beverly Bayne.  He is best remembered as Roman Massala in the silent Ben-Hur (1926), released just three years before the million-dollar-a-day leading man lost every cent in the Stock Market crash of 1929.  By the 1930s, he was a ghost of his former self, reemerging only sporadically through the 1940s and 1950s.  Not long before his death, he found new work in low-budget horror and sci-fi flicks, including 12 to the Moon (1960), The Phantom Planet (1961) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966).  He also made several guest appearances on T.V.'s "Batman" (1966).

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