FRANCIS LEDERER - AUTOGRAPHED INSCRIBED PHOTOGRAPH - HFSID 278353

FRANCIS LEDERER
B/w publicity photo of Lederer from the chest up in a suit-and-tie, signed "very very best!" and "Sincerely yours"
Photograph Inscribed and signed: "To [illegible], mydear/[illegible]/very very best!/Sincerely/yours/Francis Lederer". B/w, 8x9¾ overall, image 7½x9¼ (one surface). Francis Lederer (1899-2000, born Frantisek Lederer in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic) was an American actor with over 60 movies and TV shows to his credit. Lederer got his start on the stage and in the German film industry, where he was billed as Franz Lederer and was amajor star.He debuted on Broadway in 1932, the first of four Broadway appearances, where he was "discovered" and brought to Hollywood. He specialized in roles as an outgoing, naïve foreigner manipulated by Englishmen or Americans in such films as Man of Two Worlds (1934), Romance in Manhattan (1934) and One Rainy Afternoon (1936), graduating to roles as villains, cynics, sophisticated scoundrels and even a turn as Dracula in The Return of Dracula (1958). One of his best performances was in Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), where he played a disgruntled member of the German American Bund. He retired from films in 1958, having made his fortune in real estate. Lightly toned, stained, creased and bowed. Light impressions and scratches on image (not visible head-on). Adhesive remnants and pencil notes (unknown hand) on verso (no show-through). Otherwise, fine condition.