RICARDO CORTEZ. Slick-looking vintage 8x10 glossy black and white chest-up portrait, boldly signed and inscribed in black fountain pen, "To Saul/Ricardo Cortez." Mint condition, with a date stamp on the reverse side indicating the photograph was signed on Aug. 4, 1938. A nice Jewish boy from Vienna, Jake Krantz was rebranded as Ricardo Cortez by a Hollywood studio and groomed as a successor to Rudolph Valentino. As a contract player with Warner Bros., he made a smooth transition to sound, but a succession of mediocre scripts combined with his own limited acting ability soon led to a decline in his career. By the mid-Thirties he was pretty much relegated to playing shady characters who got bumped off in the first reel. A standout among his many films was the first screen version of The Maltese Falcon, released in 1931, in which he played Sam Spade. This photograph is from the extraordinary in-person collection of Saul Goodman, never before offered on the market.
$100 |
