Highly rare vintage 5x7-inch black and white portrait, boldly signed and inscribed in blue ballpoint pen in the early 1950s. In good condition, with minor edgewear. With his crazed eyes, frenetic energy and walrus mustache, busy German-born character actor Sig Ruman was equally adept at comedy and drama, typically cast as pompous bureaucrats whose accents grew increasingly incomprehensible as they were whipped up into frenzies. He was a favorite of the Marx Brothers, memorable as the stiff-shirted opera owner Herman Gottlieb in A Night at the Opera (1935) and a know-it-all surgeon, crossing swords with Groucho over what exactly was wrong with hypochondriac Margaret Dumont in A Day at the Races (1937). During the Second World War, he starred in espionage thrillers like Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and The Hitler Gang (1944), as well as in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942). His many other classic film credits include the horror classic House of Frankenstein (1944), in which he played Burgomeister Rumann; Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937) and Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937); Heidi (1937); Ninotchka (1939), with Bela Lugosi; The Song of Bernadette (1943); The Dolly Sisters (1945); Night and Day (1947); Houdini (1953); Stalag 17 (1953); and The Glenn Miller Story (1954).

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