Biografia

Before her acting career got off the ground, she was a model in Burlingame, California. Spotted by a talent agent, she was brought to Hollywood for a screen test and was given the name "Claire Dodd" and cast as a "Goldwyn Girl" in the Eddie Cantor musical Whoopee! (1930).

The only child of a Little Rock, Arkansas couple -- Walter W. Dodd, a veterinarian, and Ethel (née Cool) Dodd, the daughter of a postmaster. Ethel gave birth to her only child, Dorothy Arlene Dodd, in Baxter, Iowa while on a trip to Des Moines. Her father abandoned the family when she was about 10 years old and her mother later developed tuberculosis. Dorothy quit school to help support her and her mother.

First signed by Paramount in 1931, aged 19, she appeared mainly in unbilled bits. She moved to Warner Bros in 1933 and appeared in featured and second lead "bad girl" "B" roles as conniving, predatory "other women" and husband stealers. From 1936 until her retirement in 1942 she freelanced with major and "Poverty Row" studios.

Darryl F. Zanuck became her mentor throughout her little more than a decade film career. Unlike many of the characters she played, especially Vivian Rich in Viva le donne (1933), Dodd did not play the "casting couch" game and he respected her and her talent for it.

She and her second husband purchased Rock Candy Farm, where they built a red New England style farm house on 400 acres. In the opening credits of The Andy Griffith Show (1960), where Opie throws a rock into a lake -- that sequence was filmed in a neighboring yard.