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SIGNATURES
Identified individuals are represented by a biographical sketch, a list of connections to other signatures, and, in most cases, an artifact from the Ransom Centers collections. Help us identify more signatures by submitting your suggested identification.
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THE DOOR
Location on door: front, panel 1
LOUISE CLOSSER HALE
Louise Closser Hale (1872-1933) achieved success as a popular character actress. Early in her career, she made a splash on Broadway as Miss Proserpine Garnett in the 1903 production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida. During the 1920s she appeared in Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon (1920) and Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett (1920). Throughout her stage career, Hale also wrote novels, such as The Actress (1909), and travel articles and books. In 1929 she set out for Hollywood where she worked constantly, appearing in 30 films, including Shanghai Express (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933), before her death in 1933.
An agency photograph card for Louise Closser Hale, circa 1917
As this casting card for Hale suggests, actresses rarely had the luxury of being modest. The information on the back of the card gives her measurements, a physical description, and a list of her most recent engagements. The actress certainly was not shy about her age. When she signed the Greenwich Village Bookshop door, she included the notation "(age 49)."