Cat. #00106122: RAY "CRASH" CORRIGAN

Scarce and vintage 7x5-inch sepia-tone publicity image for Republic Pictures' western B-movie series The Three Mesquiteers (1936-1943), signed and inscribed in blue fountain pen in the 1930s. In good condition for its age, with a hint of silvering in sports, visible only when the piece is angled toward a light source. After working as a personal trainer to an assortment of movie stars, handsome, hulking athlete Ray "Crash" Corrigan entered films himself in 1934, initially working as a stunt man for Johnny Weissmuller in a spate of Tarzan pictures. By 1936, he was a popular western serial and action star, beloved for his work in sci-fi's Undersea Kingdom (1936); the role of Tucson Smith, alongside Bob Livingston and Max Terhune, in the Three Mesquiteers (1936-1939) films; and The Range Busters (1940). Like fellow actors Charles Gemora and George Barrows, Corrigan was frequently called upon to don gorilla suits in a long string of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and cowboy B-pictures, including Flash Gordon (1935), Round-Up Time in Texas (1937), Three Missing LInks (1938), The Ape (1940) with Bela Lugosi, The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942), Dr. Renault's Secret (1942), She's for Me (1943), Captive Wild Woman (1943), Nabonga (1944), The Monster Maker (1944), White Pongo (1945), The Monster and the Ape (1945), The White Gorilla (1945), Crime on Their Hands (1948), and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952). He also made a handful of non-simian contributions to those genres, memorable in The Phantom Empire (1935), Darkest Africa (1936), Unknown Island (1948), Killer Ape (1953), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), and It! The Terror Beyond Space (1958), as the titular alien.