Classic Entertainment Autographs

Cat. #00312531: GENE ROTH

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Rare handwritten, signed 1967 letter in blue ballpoint pen to western film scholar and author Bud Perkins. In good condition, with a minor surface crinkles, and no accompanying transmittal envelope. Note that the image of the star shown here alongside the scan of the autographed piece is not included. Tall, burly, menacing character actor Gene Roth was the quintessential heavy, abandoning his career as a movie house organ mover and installer to play villain roles in the Three Stooges shorts of the 1940s. He went on to play henchmen, Nazis, thugs, gangsters, executioners, and brutal prison guards in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), The Cross of Lorraine (1943), The Hitler Gang (1944), Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), Secret Agent X-9 (1945), A Game of Death (1945), Crime, Inc. (1945), The Shanghai Cobra (1945), Strange Illusion (1945), The Spider Woman (1945), the Superman (1948) and Dick Tracy (1950) serials, and 5 Fingers (1952). He popped up in kinder supporting roles in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, western, and crime films like Red Planet Mars (1952), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), I Want to Live! (1958), She Demons (1958), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), Cimarron (1960), Tormented (1960), Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), and Torn Curtain (1966), as well as on T.V.'s "The Twilight Zone" (1961). This is just the fourth example of his autograph we have ever encountered and the longest writing sample we know to exist.