Claire Dodd

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Claire Dodd (December 29, 1908 – November 23, 1973) was a successful American film actress.

Born Dorothy Anne Dodd in Des Moines, Iowa, Dodd's father was a doctor who abandoned her and her mother before she was ten years old. Her mother suffered from tuberculosis and was forced to support her, so young Dorothy moved to New York City at the age of 15 and joined the Ziegfeld Follies where she was eventually discovered by Darryl F. Zanuck.

She went on to work for Warner Brothers, Parmount and Universal studios. Her films included Ex-Lady (1933), The Personality Kid (1934), The Glass Key (1935), Three Loves Has Nancy (1938), and The Black Cat (1941). She twice played secretary Della Street to Warren William's Perry Mason, in The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) and The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936).

She worked in almost sixty films in twelve years from 1930 to 1942. She quit films and married H. Brand Cooper to whom she gave and raised four children (she had one child from a previous marriage, Jon Michael Strauss, b. 1936), giving birth to her last child at the age of forty-seven.

She died at home in Beverly Hills, California from cancer, aged 64.