Scarce vintage 10x8-inch glossy portrait, boldly signed and inscribed in blue fountain pen in the 1930s. In fine condition, with scattered handling bends, most noticeable around the edges; a small stain in the top border; and a tiny bit of paper loss to the top left-hand corner tip. Marvelous Rex Ingram was, for a time, the most prominent Black dramatic performer in Hollywood, second only to Paul Robeson. After medical school training, he was spotted by a movie casting director in 1918 and asked to play an African tribesman in the first of the Tarzan movies, Tarzan of the Apes, alongside Elmo Lincoln. Ingram subsequently got a succession of the typical roles available to Black actors in the silent era, playing butlers, porters and natives, perhaps most notably in The Green Pastures (1936) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

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