Photograph Inscribed by Ed Brendel to Gray Delmar

Gelatin silver photograph of Ed Brendel. 7.5" x 9.5". Mounted on card. Original label from the Rode Photo Shop in Beverly Hills preserved from previous framing. Undated but circa 1930. Mount a little age-toned, photograph is fine. A nice image of the actor. Inscribed by Brendel in the lower center: "To little Gray, Ed Brendel". The recipient of the photo, Gray Delmar was the young son of author and screenwriter Vina Delmar, best-known for her 1928 novel *Bad Girl* which was adapted into a film in 1931. She wrote a couple of screenplays, one of which was nominated for an Academy Award (*The Awful Truth,* 1937) but thereafter returned to fiction and later to conventional stage drama. Gray Delmar was later involved in television production but died relatively young in a automobile racing accident. Brendel was a vaudeville comedian who later achieved considerable success in films as the comic relief, often playing a bumbling Swede.