Cat. #0013231: HOPE EMERSON

Highly rare vintage inscribed black fountain pen signature on a 4x6-inch tan album page, acquired in-person in the 1940s. In good condition. Note that the image of the star shown here alongside the scan of the autograph is not included. 6'2"-foot tall, 230-pound character actress Hope Emerson, with her trademarked sidelong stares and grimly set mouth, played formidable villains and women-to-be-reckoned-with in both comedy and drama films of the 1940s and 1950s. She was unforgettable as a crafty, murderous masseuse in Robert Siodmark's film noir Cry of the City (1948); a circus strongwoman, tossing attorney Spencer Tracy about a courtroom like a rag doll in Adam's Rib (1949); and the sadistic prison matron in the cult classic Caged (1950), for which she earned an Oscar nod. She was also marvelous in House of Strangers (1949), Thieves' Highway (1949), Westward the Women (1951), and the Bob Hope comedy Casanova's Big Night (1954).  In the late 1950s, Emerson lent her distinctive voice to Elsie the Cow in a series of T.V. commercials for Bordens, dying shortly thereafter of liver disease, aged only 62 years.