Dodd had some early film roles in The Three Mesquiteers series of westerns. Coincidentally, he performed in two unrelated series whose names were plays on "musketeers". He made his first screen appearance in the 1940 william Holden film Those Were the Days! in a minor role. He also appeared in many theatrical films in the 1940s and 1950s, often uncredited. He appeared with John Wayne in the war films Flying Tigers (1942), Janie (1944), in which he sings a bit of Keep Your Powder Dry with star Joyce Reynolds, and with Harry Carey in China's Little Devils (1945), another film involving the Flying Tigers. He also played the taxi driver in the MGM film Easter Parade (1948), starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. Dodd had a small, but important part in the Mickey Rooney hit Quicksand (1950). Two of his films were biographies of baseball players: The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), in which Jackie Robinson played himself, and The Winning Team (1952), in which Future President Ronald Reagan portrayed pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. He played a taxi driver again in Phffft (1954).

In addition to his small role in an early episode of Adventures of Superman titled "Double Trouble," Dodd appeared as a deputy in the 1955 episode "Sontag and Evans" of the syndicated television series Stories of the Century. The segment was based on the California train Robbers Chris Evans and John Sontag.

Dodd died of cancer on November 10, 1964, in Honolulu, Hawaii, aged 54. Cheryl Holdridge was the last Mouseketeer to see Dodd alive. Holdridge visited Dodd in his final hours because she and her new husband Lance Reventlow had flown to Hawaii for their honeymoon. They came to the hospital before Dodd died. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.