Subject: Claude Gillingwater
Size: 8x10
Description: Surpassingly rare doubleweight portrait inscribed, signed, and dated (1923) by the great character actor. A strikingly moody image by Jack Freulich for Universal. Specializing in curmudgeonly roles, Gillingwater appeared in dozens of films from the silent era to the late thirties, including Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), Illicit (1931), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), and The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). As a crotchety foil to Shirley Temple, the tall, thin actor contrasted photogenically with the diminutive child star in Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Little Miss Broadway (1938), and Just Around the Corner (1938). Injured in an on-set accident in 1936 and depressed from recent widowhood, Gillingwater took his own life at sixty-nine in 1939. (Vintage original photograph; true vintage autograph)
Condition: Very Fine Minus with insignificant corner wear and minor surface flaws on the lower right area