Cat. #0014231103: GLADYS GEORGE

Uncommon vintage black fountain pen signature on a 4x5-inch light green autograph album page, acquired in-person at Chicago's Dearborn Station in 1945. In good condition and nice for matting with a favorite photograph. Vivacious, yet sad-eyed, platinum blonde Gladys George began her career on the stage, playing flirtatious flappers and ditzy society girls in Broadway productions of the 1920s. She popped up in a number of little-remembered silent films during the same period, but her movie career only took off after 1934, when she landed a starring role in Straight Is the Way. Increasingly cast against her life-of-the-party type in soapy melodramas, she earned an Oscar nod for her portrayal of the titular selfless heroine in Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (1936). As her youthfulness wore away, she slipped into character roles, notably Madame du Barry in Marie Antoinette (1938), the speakeasy owner with a crush on James Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939), Anna Kriza in The Way of All Flesh (1940), Miles Archer's philandering wife in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Hortense Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Lute Mae Sanders in Flamingo Road (1949), Mrs. Robey in He Ran All the Way (1951), and Miss Hatch in Detective Story (1951). By the 1950s, George was plagued by personal issues, including multiple failed marriages, and bouts with throat cancer, heart disease, and cirrhosis of the liver. She became a withered-looking recluse and died tragically at the age of 54, reportedly of a stroke, but suicide by sleeping pills was suspected. Her autograph is rather elusive in any format.