Highly scarce vintage inscribed blue fountain pen signature on a roughly 3x4-inch off-white slip, acquired in-person by inveterate autograph hounds Rose and Irene Gellar in the 1950s and affixed to a 4x5-inch pink album page alongside a small magazine image of the star. In good condition. Gorgeous Polish-French leading lady Bella Darvi survived the tortures of a World War II concentration camp, only to get caught up in the phony glitter and high-living of Monaco's casinos as a young adult. It is there that she was discovered by Darryl Zanuck, who signed her to a movie contract, banking on her appeal as the next Ingrid Bergman. Alas, after high-profile roles in Hell and High Water (1954), The Egyptian (1954) and The Racers (1954), her lack of acting ability proved painfully clear, and audiences mercilessly ridiculed her slight strabismus, heavy foreign accent and pronounced lisp. These, combined with an explosive affair with Zanuck, ended her career, and she returned to a wild lifestyle of drinking and gambling, resulting in an endless string of debts. In 1971, Darvi committed suicide by gassing herself-- a disturbing death, when one thinks of her evading the gas chambers as a child-- aged only 42 years. 

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