Extremely rare vintage 4.5 x 6-inch pale pink album page, boldly signed and inscribed in-person in 1931, with a nod to his celebrated role in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalype (1921). In very good condition. Note that the image of the star shown here alongside the scan of the autograph is not included. After a stint in Mack Sennett silent comedies, veteran German-born silent and early talkie character actor Josef Swickard earned a name for himself portraying mad-eyed villains, deranged scientists, exotic mystics, and eccentric aristocrats. He made several important contributions to the horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and crime genres, including The Shadow of the East (1924); Dante's Inferno (1924); The Wizard of Oz (1925), as Prime Minister Kruel; The Mysterious Stranger (1925); The Return of Chandu (1934), as Tyba the White Magician alongside Bela Lugosi; and the serials The Lost City (1935) and Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939).  Elsewhere, he was mesmerizing in classic films like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Old San Francisco (1927), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and The Mad Empress (1939). Swickard died in 1940, not long after his son brutally murdered his wife, but from natural causes-- not by leaping from the Hollywood sign, as was rumored at the time of his death.

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