Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler in Min and Bill
Marie Dressler II: Silent Films, Movie Stardom
How did Marie Dressler react to her newfound stardom?
Marie basked in her success. She had been through enough trials in life — points when she couldn't get a job — and so she was more than ready for fame and adoration. I think audiences loved that they could give that to her, too. It made them feel good to shower her with love, because she took it so gratefully and graciously. She was the loving grandmother that her fans wanted to protect and comfort, while she comforted, amused, and moved them in return.
Her stardom also points to something missing from modern movies. In the 1930s and into the 1940s, American films had an array of character types, including the "imperious older woman." Marie's success was without peer, but she was not alone in the anti-glamour, anti-youth department. There were Margaret Dumont, Lucile Watson, Alison Skipworth, May Robson, Mary Boland, Beulah Bondi, and Spring Byington, among others. They were simply fantastic, and their types have all but disappeared from the screen. Or today, they toil beyond the glare of recognition — fine actresses like Celia Weston, Grace Zabriskie, and Margo Martindale. Kathy Bates has maintained a thriving film career, but it seems to me that today the middle aged or older actress is expected to look young, and those without great beauty have to attempt the sexy glamour routine anyway. Whatever happened to the embrace of dignified and vital maturity?
Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. Marie Dressler and Polly Moran (right, in Reducing). How did those screen couples get along? And why do you think Dressler became a top star but not her partner Moran?
When Marie carried a movie by herself, the results were spectacular. So why MGM insisted on putting her in partner movies with Wallace Beery and Polly Moran is a bit mysterious. Marie didn't like Beery as a person, but then from everything I've read, he wasn't particularly likable. In fact, most paint him as a real son of a bitch — loud, impatient, and belittling. But they do play off each other marvelously; the two old troupers evoking so much life experience when they are on screen together.
Marie and Beery formed such an indelible impression in the early 1930s that they are often listed as among the screen's all-time great duos. But they only made two movies together as a true team, Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie. If Marie came to symbolize endurance against breadlines and foreclosures, she and Beery together doubled the impact.
Marie spoke kindly of Polly Moran, but she did come to chafe at the rather uninspired comedies the two of them were given. Their first co-starring talkie, Caught Short, is unavailable, but Reducing, Politics, and Prosperity are all silly and entertaining. In the book I suggest they are good time-capsule movies, especially Prosperity, which deals with the Depression head-on in its plot.
It's true that Moran did not become a big star, and in fact struggled to maintain a career after Marie died. When I see them together, I'm automatically drawn to Marie, who knew every trick of upstaging. Moran's comedy is broad like Marie's, but she lacks Marie's edge of sweetness and show of humanity. Marie could be self-deprecating, bellicose, tender, cutting, goofy, and sentimental in the space of one sentence. Moran simply didn't have that range.
What was Marie Dressler's relationship with MGM head Louis B. Mayer like? Who chose her MGM vehicles?
Marie was always gracious to Mayer in public, and was deeply grateful for his support of her career. He was one of the architects of her success, and she knew it. But behind closed doors she complained that she wasn't being paid what she was worth, and that Mayer could be stranglingly possessive.
Mayer absolutely loved Marie in that paternalistic way he loved his favorite contractees. He once declared that the three greatest actors he ever worked with were Garbo, Spencer Tracy, and Marie. Not only was she hugely talented and profitable for MGM, but her difficult behavior earlier in her career was gone — so that the latter-day Marie was highly cooperative.
She was also a delightful party guest, amusing governors, presidents, and other dignitaries passing through Hollywood. She was a guest in Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's White House, and was part of the William Randolph Hearst/San Simeon party crowd. No wonder Mayer loved her so much.
Irving Thalberg, with Frances Marion's input, made most of the creative decisions that directly affected Marie's career, while Mayer would order another fast, cheap, and profitable Polly Moran comedy whenever MGM was feeling the pinch of the Depression.
Marie was especially close to studio publicist Howard Strickling. In fact, she gave him her Academy Award for Min and Bill when she knew she was dying of cancer.