Autographs
Film Director “Ernst Lubitsch” Sepia Tone Portrait Signed
ERNST LUBITSCH (1892-1947). German-born Film Director.
Classy Double-Weight Matte Sepia Tone Portrait Signed, “Ernst Lubitsch,” measures 3.25” x 5.25”, undated, Choice Very Fine. Postcard portrait of the German director, Signed in black ink below the image. On verso is typical postcard print with left half blank for written greeting and address lines and stamp outline on right. Quite rarely seen.
Ernst Lubitsch was the undisputed master of the sophisticated sex comedy. He was known for his subtle humor and virtuoso visual wit. For 20 years, the name of “Lubitsch” was synonymous with all that was witty, naughty and stylish in screen comedy - commonly known as “The Lubitsch Touch.”

He was the inventor of a unique film language based on suggestion, inference, metaphor and ellipsis. Arriving in Hollywood in 1922, he made Rosita (1922) with Mary Pickford, follwed by a series of sophisticated risque comedies at Warner Bros. during his five-year contract with the studio, including The Marriage Circle (1924), Forbidden Paradise (1924), Kiss Me Again (1925), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927). Lubitsch moved to Paramount in 1929, where he filmed many of his masterpieces, including The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932) - considered his most formally perfect work - and Design for Living (1933). Moving to MGM, he made the film Ninotchka (1939), a hilarious blend of gentle political satire and romantic comedy starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. His later films included the charming and sentimental The Shop Around the Corner (1940), the anti-Nazi comedy To Be Or Not To Be (1942), starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, Heaven Can Wait (1943) and Cluny Brown (1946).

In 1946, Lubitsch received a special Academy Award (a scroll) “for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture.”