Classic Entertainment Autographs

Cat. #0012451: CLAIRE DODD

Scarce vintage inscribed blue fountain pen signature on a 4x6-inch pink autograph album page, acquired in-person in the 1930s. In good condition, with a minor crease to the upper right-hand corner, well away from the writing. Discovered by Darryl F. Zanuck while appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, Dodd played scheming, quick-witted seductress in heaps of films at Warner Brothers, opposite Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Errol Flynn. Nicknamed "The Ice Bucket," she managed to project a more likable, down-to-earth image as Della Street in the Perry Mason flicks The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) and The Case of the Lucky Legs (1936), actually marrying the titular attorney in the latter. She spent her last Hollywood years at Universal, playing pleasant, but colorless heroines, most notably in Abbott and Costello's In the Navy (1941), and the horror gems The Black Cat (1941) and The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942). She died of cancer at the age of 64.