Claudia Dell

Claudia Dell

A showgirl in the 1927 Ziegfeld Follies and the understudy for its star, Irene Delroy, blonde, blue-eyed leading lady Claudia Dell had been educated in San Antonio, TX, and Mexico City. Imported to Hollywood in the heady early days of sound, the porcelain pretty Dell made a potentially important screen debut in the title role of Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930). But the Regency romance, really an operetta but without the music, tanked at the box office despite the added attraction of two-strip Technicolor, and a co-starring role opposite Al Jolson in Big Boy did as little for her as Sonny Boy (1929) had for the equally blonde Josephine Dunn. Warner Bros. subsequently dropped her option and she was relegated to Poverty Row. Rebounding at Universal, Dell did Destry Rides Again (1932) with Tom Mix, the first of four B-Westerns, and she was the nominal heroine in a very cheap action serial, The Lost City (1935). Dell was playing bit roles by the end of the decade and the 1940s saw her cast in low-grade Monogram antics such as Black Magic (1944), a Charlie Chan series entry, and Call of the Jungle (1944), a humid potboiler starring stripper Ann Corio. Divorced from theatrical agent Edwin Stilton, Claudia Dell later worked as a beauty shop receptionist and appeared in early television dramas. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide