HIGHLY rare and just great vintage typed letter on a 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of tan Essanay letterhead, dated 1916, boldly signed in black fountain pen and decorated by the recipient with two magazine images of the actor who was, at that time, just transitioning from the stage to the screen. Chipping to the edges in three spots and some mounting remnants on the verso; otherwise, in fine condition for its age. Henry B. Walthall, leading character actor of the stage, and silent and early talkie screens, made a considerable number of contributions to the horror, sci-fi and fantasy film genres, beginning with D.W. Griffith's The Wanderer (1913) and the Edgar Allan Poe picture The Avenging Conscience (1914).  He went on to portray Captain Arling and Oswald in Ghosts (1915), Poe in The Raven (1915), the invisible Peter Marchmont and Victor Cromport in The Unknown Purple (1923), Sir James Hamlin in Tod Browning’s tragically lost London After Midnight (1927), Captain Rhodes in Stark Mad (1929), Boyd Milburn in The Phantom in the House (1929), Robert Regent in Chandu the Magician (1932), J.D. Bradley in The Whispering Shadow (1933), Professor Mysto in The Murder in the Museum (1935), and-- perhaps best of all-- the deranged scientist Marcel in Browning’s The Devil-Doll (1936). 

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