Classic Entertainment Autographs

Cat. #00061101: WALTER BRENNAN

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Scarce vintage inscribed black fountain pen signature on a 3.5 x 5.25-inch yellow autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1940s. In good condition and accompanied by a small computer-printed image of the star. Due to a vocal chord injury sustained in World War I, vaudevillian and character actor Walter Brennan had a high-pitched, scratchy voice that facilitated playing old man roles, while still in his thirties. Moreover, he had removable false teeth, following an incident in which he was kicked in the face by a mule, which, when removed, further enhanced his portrayals of elderly persons, as well as a remarkable faculty for mimicking ethnic accents.  Brennan, who nabbed a whopping three Academy Awards, was unforgettable as a mixed bag of old codgers, and alternatively warm and fuzzy or utterly corrupt personages in The Wedding Night (1935), Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938), The Texans (1938), The Buccaneer (1938), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Stanley and Livingston (1939), They Shall Have Music (1939), The Westerner (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), Swamp Water (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), The North Star (1943), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Princess and the Pirate (1944), My Darling Clementine (1946), Task Force (1949), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Far Country (1955), and Rio Bravo (1959). Brennan also popped up in small roles in a number of horror, sci-fi and fantasy classics, including a clown in The Last Performance (1927), a reporter in King Kong (1933), a bicyclist in The Invisible Man (1933), a townsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a gossip in Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), and D.J. Mulrooney in Disney's The Gnome-Mobile (1967).  In the late 1950s onward, he was busy on television, starring on "The Real McCoys" (1957-1959) and "The Tycoon" (1964-1965), or else disquieting audiences on talk shows with his extreme right-wing politics.