Highly scarce vintage 3.25 x 5.5-inch sepia-tone Ross Verlag postcard portrait, boldly signed in blue fountain pen around the time of his appearance in Metropolis in 1927. In good condition for its age, with a minute fleck of soiling touching the area of his earlobe. After gaining fame for his portrayal of the scheming Cassius in a Halberstadt production of Julius Caesar in 1909, mesmerizing German character actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge went on to play scores of crazed, eccentric and demonically wicked villains in silent and early talkie classics, beginning with a small role as a criminal in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). He was a regular in films scripted by his ex-wife, Thea von Harbou, and/or directed by the man for whom she left him, Fritz Lang: Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), Spies (1928), and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). He was also unforgettable as the tyrant in the horror flick Der Steinerne Reiter (1923), a pirate in Pietro der Korsar (1925) and the Czar in The Loves of Casanova (1927). 

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