Scarce and terrific 8x10-inch black and white chest-up publicity portrait for Tiger Bay (1959), boldly signed in black marker in the 1970s or 1980s.  In good condition, with minor handling dings, edge wear and toning.  Discovered by Noel Coward while working the London music hall circuit, Mills became a staple of revues, musicals and West End plays throughout the 1930s.  He also appeared in vaguely-remembered films like The Ghost Camera (1933), Born for Glory (1935) and The Green Cockatoo (1937), before making his Hollywood debut in Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1939.  Refusing multiple entreaties to sign with an American studio, he returned to England, where he gained stardom playing gallant, but emotionally troubled heroes in the military epics In Which We Serve (1942), We Dive at Dawn (1943), Waterloo Road (1945), Johnny in the Clouds (1945), Scott of the Antarctic (1948), Ice Cold Alex (1968), Tunes of Glory (1960), and the send-up Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).  Elsewhere, he was memorable in This Happy Breed (1944), Great Expectations (1946), Hobson's Choice (1954), War and Peace (1956), The Chalk Garden (1956), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), Young Winston (1972), and Gandhi (1981), as well as in the horror and sci-fi flicks The Quartermass Conclusion (1979), Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984), Frankenstein (1992), and Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets (1995).  Forty years after his film debut, Mills snagged a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the mute village idiot in David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970).

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