Cat. #00196202224: ROBERT NEWTON

Highly rare vintage inscribed black fountain pen signature on a 4 x 6.5-inch tan autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1940s and decorated with a small magazine image of the star. In good condition, with gentle toning in spots. This is just the fifth autograph we have ever encountered of Robert Newton, the great British character actor whose portrayal of feverish-looking Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1950) became the prototype for every movie pirate thereafter, right down to his West County accent defining the quintessential "pirate voice"! He was elsewhere memorable as a mixed bag of heroic and villainous types in films like I, Claudius (1937), Dark Journey (1937), Jamaica Inn (1939), Hell's Cargo (1939), Gaslight (1940), Henry V (1944), This Happy Breed (1944), Odd Man Out (1947), Oliver Twist (1948), Les Miserables (1952), The Beachcomber (1954), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956) before his tragic death of a heart attack at the age of 50.