Cat. #0015661071: REX INGRAM

Scarce and magnificent vintage 8x10-inch black and white portrait in 1938's steamy Broadway play "Haiti," shown shirtless, with his arms akimbo and a pistol tucked in his waistband, boldly signed and inscribed in blue fountain pen in 1939. In very good to fine condition, with scattered light creasing and emulsion crazing. Marvelous Rex Ingram was, for a time, the most prominent Black dramatic performer in Hollywood, second only to Paul Robeson. After medical school training, he was spotted by a movie casting director in 1918 and asked to play an African tribesman in the first of the Tarzan movies, Tarzan of the Apes, alongside Elmo Lincoln. Ingram subsequently got a succession of the typical roles available to Black actors in the silent era, playing butlers, porters and natives, perhaps most notably in The Green Pastures (1936) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).