Rare vintage pencil signature on a 1.25 x 2.5-inch portion of a tan autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1930s and affixed in recent years to a piece of cardstock of roughly the same size. A pencil signature of actor and singer Charles Richman is also pasted to the opposite side of the Dale piece. In good condition, with gentle toning, and accompanied by a small computer-printed image of the star. Unforgettable stage and screen character actress Esther Dale typically played warm-hearted aunts, mothers, nurses, neighbors, cooks, and shopkeepers, but was occasionally cast as domineering, venom-spewing dowagers. Among her many memorable film credits were Private Worlds (1934), Fury (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Of Human Hearts (1938), Condemned Women (1938), The Women (1939), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1939), The Mortal Storm (1940), Back Street (1941), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Margie (1946), The Egg and I (1947), Ma and Pa Kettle (1949), the sci-fi-themed comedy Monkey Business (1952), and North to Alaska (1960).

• Tweet