Cat. #00132343: ISOBEL ELSOM

Highly uncommon vintage 6.5 x 8-inch black and white costume portrait, dating to the 1940s, boldly signed in blue ballpoint pen in the following decade for inveterate collector Charles K. Stumpf.  In fairly good condition, but priced to reflect a lengthy diagonal crease traveling from the upper left-hand corner across her back to her left hip and very faint ink stains from Stumpf's rubber stamp pad to the right of her head.  Matronly, no-nonsense British character actress Isobel Elsom was the epitome of opulent, grande dame haughtiness from the silent era through Hollywood's Golden Age.  She was memorable as the Margaret Dumont-like foil to Jerry Lewis in Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958), The Bell Boy (1960), The Errand Boy (1961), and Who's Minding the Store (1963), and a long string of other huffy bluebloods in the Sherlock Holmes flick The Sign of Four (1923), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Between Two Worlds (1944), The Unseen (1945), Of Human Bondage (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), Lust for Life (1956), The Miracle (1959), and My Fair Lady (1964).