[Walter Rilla, German actor in more than 130 films.] Autograph Letter Signed ('Walter (Rilla)') and Autograph Card Signed ('Walter'), in English, to playwright Christopher Fry, recalling with affection happy times travelling together on the Rhine.

Author: 
Walter Rilla (1894-1980), German film actor of Jewish descent, who fled to Britain from the Nazis, and acted in more than 130 films [Christopher Fry (1907-2005), playwright]
Publication details: 
Letter from Vienna, on letterhead of Lohbachhof, Oberaudorf/Inn; 7 November 1966. Viennese postcard, dated 26 November 1966.
£150.00
SKU: 21944

Both items in good condition, but the postcard (of a Viennese street scene) with stamp torn off. ONE: ALS. Signed 'Walter (Rilla)'. Vienna; 7 November 1966. 1p, 8vo. Twenty-six lines of text, in a neat close hand. An affectionate and intimate letter, addressed to 'My dear Christopher Fry' and beginning: 'The reason I am not calling you by the abbreviated & more intimate form of your Christian name – the one I used to call you by eighteen years ago when we travelled up & down the Rhine together – is the same that prevented me from calling on you when I was in London recently & happened to pass through Little Venice. Eighteen years is an appallingly long time (my old enemy, Time, my old friend) - & you might not remember me any more. But when to-day I read about you in the Atticus column of the Sunday Times, and saw your picture, & learned that you were “the world's most desirable screenplay writer” but still “a very restrained, reticent, self-effacing man of fifty-eight” - - - Good Lord, fifty-eight, & I am sixty-seven, & what is eighteen years after all, & I once felt very close to you & have never forgotten you & the sound of your voice, & a year or so ago I even saw you on TV in my home in the Bavarian mountains, giving Houston [the film director John Houston, for whose 1966 biblical epic 'In the Beginning' Fry wrote the screenplay] his ones through a megaphone on the set of Noah's Ark – well, I thought I must drop you a line & send you love & greetings for old time's sake.' He invites him to visit, and meet his wife, 'For I am married again, for nearly eight years now – my wife is not only young & beautiful but a very gifted writer [the French writer Alix Degrelle-Hirth du Frênes] - & I must be the happiest man on earth.' He ends with details of the play he is acting in in Vienna. TWO: ACS. Signed 'Walter'. 26 November 1966. Begins: 'Thank you very much, my dear Kit, for your letter – it was good to hear from you after all these years & see your familiar handwriting again which hasn't changed at all'. He is delighted to learn that Fry is working on a new play, and adds: 'I haven't seen Curtmantle, only read it & liked it very much!' He asks him to remember his address, as he and his wife Alix would be delighted with a visit.