Bonar Colleano - 15230

American actor, long resident in Britain. His real name was Bonar Sullivan, but he took on his family's stage name when he joined the Colleano family acrobatic circus act at the age of 5. At the age of 12 Colleano moved to England, spending the next few years performing in music halls, and on stage and radio. He made his film debut in 1944 playing Joe Friselli in The Way To The Stars, establishing his screen persona as the stereotypical brash, wisecracking, gum-chewing "Yank", picking up a huge female fan base in the process. Later films included A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948) and many other British films in which he played caricature Americans. It wasn't until 1952 that he was cast in a bonafide American production, Stanley Kramer's Eight Iron Men. Colleano married British Rank actress, Susan Shaw (met on the set of their film Pool of London in 1951) and had a son with her, actor Mark Colleano, who later appeared opposite Rock Hudson in Hornet's Nest as a 14-year-old Italian boy. Colleano died in a road accident, coming back to London from a theatre engagement out of town. The 1958 tragedy made front-page news in the English papers. Upon his death, Susan Shaw was never the same again, battling a drink problem till the end of her days in 1978. This is a fine vintage photograph (3.5" x 2.5"), as Tommy Possey, an American speedway rider in the early Dirk Bogarde vehicle Once a Jolly Swagman (1949). There's a fine signature in blue fountain pen ink across the image. In very good condition (shown loosely mounted with photo corners on a white card (5.5" x 3.5")