Scarce vintage 8x10-inch black and white portrait by Otto Dyar, boldly signed and inscribed in black fountain pen, circa 1931. In fine condition, with very minor paper loss along the left edge and scattered mild handling bends, which do not substantially detract from the overall appearance of the piece. Hungarian-born Paul Lukas played a mixed bag of vile villains and eagle-eyed men of the law, unforgettable as the sham physician Dr. Hartz who attempts to kidnap May Whitty by covering her head-to-toe in bandages in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938); suave detective Philo Vance in The Casino Murder Case (1935); Parada in the Bob Hope horror-themed comedy The Ghost Breakers (1940): W.S. Bruhl in the horror flick The Monster and the Girl (1941); anti-Fascist Kurt Muller in Watch on the Rhine (1943), for which he beat out Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca for an Academy Award; and Professor Aronnax in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

• Tweet