Marie Dressler
Marie Dressler in Dinner at 8
It’s Oscar time. What better way to celebrate the 2008 Academy Awards than by having a q&a about the best actress Oscar winner … of 1931?
(Or rather, for the period 1930-31, as the Oscars in those days covered films released in the Los Angeles area from August 1 to July 31.)
And who was the best actress winner that year?
Well, none other than — according to US film exhibitors’ polls — the biggest box-office attraction in the United States of the early 1930s.
That’s Joan Crawford, right?
Wrong.
Norma Shearer? Greta Garbo? Barbara Stanwyck? Jean Harlow?
Nope.
Betty Grable!
Go get yourself a film history book. Grable was the biggest female box-office attraction of the 1940s.
Who then?
Marie Dressler.
Who??
Marie Dressler — an actress without Betty Grable’s legs (or Barbara Stanwyck’s, for that matter), or Greta Garbo’s androgynous allure, or Jean Harlow’s sweet-and-tarty sexiness, or Norma Shearer’s poise, or Joan Crawford’s penciled eyebrows and shoulder pads.
Dressler, in fact, was at the time old enough to be those young actresses’ mother — and looked old enough to be their mothers’ (big, bulky, boisterous) mother.
A star in vaudeville at the turn of the 20th century, Marie Dressler was a major stage name in the 1910s, a time when she also appeared in a handful of silent comedies, including what is reportedly the first feature-length comedy ever made, (the recently restored) Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), opposite Charles Chaplin and Mabel Normand.
Not long thereafter, Dressler was a down-and-out has-been.
Through the assistance of old friends — especially screenwriter Frances Marion — in the late 1920s Dressler had a minor career renaissance, playing mostly supporting roles in various Hollywood films.
At about that time, the talkies arrived. MGM featured Dressler in the all-star musical The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and in the following year she landed a (hilarious) supporting role in The Girl Said No, stealing the movie from its nominal star, William Haines.
Also in 1930, she supported Norma Shearer in Let Us Be Gay – nearly running away with the film — and Greta Garbo in the English-language version of Anna Christie. Garbo received an Academy Award nomination for her overwrought performance, but many felt that the heavy, heavy drama belonged to Dressler’s barfly.
That same year, Dressler played leads in two films that would unexpectedly catapult her to superstardom: the highly popular quickie Caught Short, opposite comedienne Polly Moran (above, with Charles Morton and Anita Page), and the sentimental mother(ly) love drama Min and Bill, squabbling with boyfriend Wallace Beery while resorting to whatever means necessary — even murder — to protect waif Dorothy Jordan. Needless to say, Dressler’s unlikely heroine must pay for it at the end. That mix of broad humor, unabashed sentiment, and out-of-control mugging became MGM’s most profitable hit of the year.
Following her Oscar win for Min and Bill, Dressler was kept busy at the studio. She starred in more broad comedies — Politics, Reducing, Prosperity, all three with Polly Moran, and Tugboat Annie, once again opposite Wallace Beery; the sudsy drama Emma, for which she received another Academy Award nomination; the David O. Selznick-produced all-star comedy-drama Dinner at 8, in which she was top billed; and The Late Christopher Bean, a dramatic comedy co-starring Lionel Barrymore.
And then it all came to an abrupt end. Dressler died of cancer in 1934, at the age of 65.
With the exception of the well-received Dinner at 8, Dressler’s vehicles were major box-office hits (especially in the United States), but were not considered high-class entertainment. ("It is regrettable that Miss Dressler and Mr. Beery should have been cast for the first time together in this far from pleasant film," read Mordaunt Hall’s Min and Bill review in the New York Times.) That may explain the dearth of critical appraisal of her career and performances. Also, I should add that although audiences loved Dressler, more than a few critics found her acting style much too mannered.
Indeed, Marie Dressler could never be accused of being a subtle actress. That said, at her best — Let Us Be Gay (right, with Norma Shearer), The Girl Said No, Dinner at 8, the last scene in Min and Bill — she remains as effective as ever.
A few years ago, author Matthew Kennedy wrote a Marie Dressler bio appropriately titled Marie Dressler. Matt, whom I met at a book reading of his Edmund Goulding bio, Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory (that’s going to be our next q&a), and who was q&a’ed on this blog following the publication of his Joan Blondell biography, Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes, has kindly agreed to take another look at his old biographical subject. See next page.
(Also, make sure to check out Jeff Cohen’s look at the aborted 1930 MGM musical The March of Time, in which Marie Dressler had a role.)
Photos: Courtesy of Matthew Kennedy
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Tags: Books, Caught Short, Classic Movies, Dinner at 8, Interviews, Let Us Be Gay, Marie Dressler, Matthew Kennedy, Min and Bill, Polly Moran
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I have a letter from a cousin in 1931 and she had just seen the Reducing movie with Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. “It was very funny,” she said.
She lived on W. 88th St, renting rooms to boarders.
In 1931 there weren’t many funny things going on and it sounded like my cousin appreciated the bit of respite from the drudgery of her life.
I am trying to find that movie for sale so I can add it to my ancestral collection.