Scarce and flawless vintage blue ballpoint pen signature on a 4x6-inch tan autograph album page, acquired in-person in the late 1950s. After a stint as a stage and radio actress, Hagen was selected as one of a handful of "new face" Broadway performers to appear in the supporting cast of the Tracy/Hepburn comedy Adam's Rib (1949), cast as the slatternly "other woman" who comes between Judy Holliday and Tom Ewell. This led to a long-term MGM contract and a dramatic role as Sterling Hayden's doomed girlfriend in John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950). In 1952, she landed her best-ever screen role; that of the screechy-voiced silent film star Lina Lamont in the beloved musical Singin' in the Rain, earning an Oscar nod in the process. Over the next three years, she played Margaret Williams, wife of nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas, on T.V.'s "Make Room for Daddy", but ultimately deemed the part to be beneath her and impulsively abandoned the sitcom. Unfortunately, she was thereafter unable to regain her footing, with only a handful of exceptions, like The Shaggy Dog (1959), Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and the horror flick Panic in the Year Zero! (1962). She tragically died after a gallant battle with throat cancer at the age of 54 and her autograph is highly uncommon in any format.

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