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coffeedan1927

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    The Private Life of Marie Dressler

    in Trivia

    Posted

    Now we relieve last week's tension by bringing you the final installment of Adela Rogers St. Johns's biographical series The Private Life of Marie Dressler.

     

    To put this in historical perspective, Marie Dressler would make only three more pictures after this series originally appeared -- TUGBOAT ANNIE, DINNER AT EIGHT, and CHRISTOPHER BEAN -- before she died of cancer on July 28, 1934, still one of the top box-office attractions of that year. But for now, it's 1933, and Marie is still at the top of her game, so here's . . .

     

     

    PART FOUR -- CONCLUSION (Liberty, June 3, 1933)

     

    When the telephone rang that afternoon in Marie Dressler's New York flat, it changed the story of her life.

     

    Yet, when Marie answered it, it seemed a very small thing. Allan Dwan, one of Hollywood's best directors, wanted Marie to play a small part in a picture with Olive Borden, which was to be made in Florida. Nothing to get excited about!

     

    But for three devoted friends, Marie might have missed the path to glory. Perhaps, in the last analysis, friendship has always played the star part in Marie's history. I tell you in all sincerity that, as I have talked with one after another of them, my faith in friendship has been revived.

     

    Perhaps Marie is right when she says, as she so often does, "Friendship is the crown of life."

     

    To have a friend, you must be a friend. The "breaks" that Marie's friends won for her, the tireless efforts they put forth in her behalf, the way they changed the pattern of her existence from despair to triumph -- all these were a sort of spiritual debt that had to be paid back to her. Nella Webb, Jimmy Forbes, and most of all, Frances Marion. Right here, at the crucial moment of her existence, they wove her destiny.

     

    Because at first, Marie wasn't at all inclined to give up her trip to Europe just to make a motion picture. One picture. A bum part. When it was over she'd be right back where she was now. What was the good of it?

     

    Nella Webb is a small, dark, pretty woman with a deep hearty laugh and quick decisive movements. Starting as a chorus girl with the old Lederer shows, where she first met Dressler, she had become internationally known as a diseuse, a forerunner of Ruth Draper and Cornelia Otis Skinner. But her real interest for years had been in astrology. While she had played in Europe and Australia, she had studied it under the masters. Over and over again, she had foretold events in Marie's life.

     

    And when she struck a blank time in the theater, it was Marie who persuaded her to give up the stage and turn to astrology as a profession. She sent all her friends to Nella to get their horoscopes read. She boosted Nella everywhere she went.

     

    Now Nella was determined upon motion pictures for Marie.

     

    No matter how many nights she sat up searching the great volumes in which are printed the records of the stars, no matter which way she turned to read their meaning, the same answer came. Not behind Marie Dressler lay her greatest triumphs. Not in her stage work had she reached the peak of her career. Far from being finished, she had only begun. Ahead, in some new medium, the stars foretold amazing success, worldwide influence, activity, and happiness for Marie Dressler.

     

    So, while Marie walked up and down the huge old-fashioned living room which they occupied together and grunted out her disapproval of this offer, Nella went to her charts and her books.

     

    "It's all here, Marie," she said. "Motion pictures must be the thing for you. You've got to take whatever offers, for that way opportunity lies."

     

    "Humph!" said Marie. "You've been singing that tune a long time. We made motion pictures last year, didn't we, and where did that get us?"

     

    It was true enough. In 1926, Nella and Marie had gone to Europe to make a series of comedy-travelogues. The money was supplied by that press agent de luxe, Harry Reichenbach. The pictures had no director and no story. The idea was simply to photograph beautiful and historical places with Marie moving through, handing out a few laughs. The first one showed Marie at the Palace of Versailles, where she fell into the lake.

     

    They were pretty terrible. At this moment, they repose somewhere in the warehouses of the American customs. Marie was so disgusted with them that she wouldn't even pay the duty.

     

    "Yes sir, we made motion pictures," she said, coming to peer over Nella's shoulder at the strange signs and figures. "I've made a lot of motion pictures. Once before I got up my own company -- and I'm still paying back money to folks who invested in that. I don't want anything more to do with them!"

     

    "We were premature," said Nella Webb. "Didn't I tell you you'd get a telephone call this very day about motion pictures? Didn't I make you come back from Atlantic City so you'd be here when the call came? I tell you, this is too plain to be wrong!"

     

    Still Marie didn't want to do it.

     

    The truth was that she was sore and hurt. In spite of the front that she presented to the public, the good cheer that never failed her friends, she was deeply wounded that she couldn't get a chance in New York.

     

    She knew perfectly well tht when she went into Jake Shubert's office and sat outside with a joke and a laugh, inside Jake Shubert was squirming with embarrassment and saying to his secretary: "I don't want to see her. I can't use her. She's through. I hate to tell her -- just say I'm not here."

     

    She knew that her two devoted friends, Helena Dayton and Louise Barrett, both brilliant and successful women in the theater, had written a play for her and taken it to every manager in New York, only to be told: "The public doesn't want Dressler any more. She's too old. they've forgotten her. Most of them never heard of her. Audiences want youth. We wouldn't have Marie at any price."

     

    And the stage -- acting, the art of the theater -- was the real soul of Marie's life. Her personal popularity, her devoted friends, her charity work -- none of these could quite take the empty place left by her work. There was no place for her in her own world of the theater, and she wanted to get far away from it and devote her enormous energy to something else.

     

    To stay and make a picture was only to prolong the agony.

     

    "Nope," she said to Nella Webb, "I'm not going to do it! I'm going to Paris and start my hotel over there. I'm going to devote myself to that."

     

    Nella argued, pled. Then she went for reinforcements. Maybe to this day, Marie herself doesn't know how it happened that Jimmy Forbes, the brilliant playwright whose devotion to her has lasted a lifetime, came sauntering in that evening.

     

    Immediately Marie started upon her plans for a hotel in Paris. If there was a deep undertone of sadness in this change that meant farewell to her country and her profession, no one would have dreamed it to look at her eager face.

     

    But Jimmy and Nella, loving her, caught the break that came now and then in her voice.

     

    "Nothing but American cooking," said Marie. "Think of all the Americans who'd love some real ham and eggs! And plenty of baths. And I'll kinda make things lively around there, so it'll seem like home. You can come and stay, Jimmy, and Nella can -- and -- "

     

    The list was long. Jimmy listened. Finally, he said, "Who's going to stay at your hotel beside your friends, Mary?"

     

    "Huh?" said Dressler.

     

    "You know what'll happen, don't you?" said Jimmy Forbes, with his most reasonable air. "You'll be running the finest free boarding house in Europe. Oh, you'll be a fine hotel keeper, Mary! Every American girl, every down-and-out actor, every poor hungry art student,anybody you ever knew or heard of that's broke in Europe, will be eating off you. You'll never turn anybody away, and you'll never collect any bills, and you'll give most of them money to get back to America. It won't last six months -- unless you've got the United States Mint back of you."

     

    "The very idea!" sputtered Marie furiously.

     

    "Well?" said Jimmy. "Be honest, Mary."

     

    "Oh, all right," said Marie. "But you'll make yourself awfully unpopular some day, Jimmy, being always right!"

     

    She made that one picture [THE JOY GIRL] and sat down to wait. In spite of Nella's faith and devotion, in spite of the encouragement of the stars, Marie wasn't sure.

     

    ***********

     

    But out in California, events were shaping. Unknown to Marie, destiny was moving toward undreamed ends. The goddess who pulled the strings was Frances Marion.

     

    It is the opinion of many people who ought to know, among them Irving Thalberg, that Frances Marion is the greatest genius Hollywood has produced. There can be no question that, as far as screen writing goes, she distances her field.

     

    From 13 straight pictures which made and kept Mary Pickford "America's Sweetheart" for many years, she went on to a list of phenomenal box-office smashes.

     

    Sitting in her office at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio one day in 1927, Frances receved the following letter from Elisabeth Marbury, her close friend and Marie's:

     

    Anne Morgan and I have just lunched with Marie, who is back from making a picture in Florida. Marie is as usual gay, optimistic, and kind. But there is a sad, searching look in her eyes that we don't like. We are sure she isn't, though she'd never admit it, as comfortably fixed as she should be. But how can we expect her pocket to hold her money when her hand is always digging into it for everybody? Why shouldn't she stage a comeback in pictures?

     

    Frances sat there while the life of the great studio hummed around her, while telephones rang and directors sent frantic messages, and looked back over a friendship of 20 years.

     

    She saw a slim, shy, frightened little cub reporter on a San Francisco paper, whose first assignment was to interview the great musical comedy star, Marie Dressler, who was playing there for a week. That girl's name was Frances Marion; but she was in her early teens then. It was her first job; she had taken it only because the fire of 1906 had wrecked her family's fortune.

     

    Scared to death -- even now Frances Marion is one of the shyest people in the world -- the cub reporter went through the rain to get her interview.

     

    Marie Dressler and Frances Marion met for the first time.

     

    "I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," said Marie Dressler. "I wished then that I had a daughter like that. I still wish so."

     

    "Her kindness was something you could never forget," said Frances. "You see, it was raining. I didn't have any coat. So when I left, she insisted on lending me one. Well, I weighed about 95 pounds in those days, and Marie was twice as big as she is now. I went out of there wrapped up in a tent and nearly broke my neck struggling up Market Street. But I was warm inside. It happened that I needed encouragement pretty badly that day. And I was warmed and encouraged inside by her generosity and good cheer."

     

    Their paths crossed once more when Marie went to Hollywood to make TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE. Frances was doing publicity, and it neve occurred to her that Dressler, the great star, would remember the kid who had interviewed her. One day, crossing the lot, they bumped into each other.

     

    "Hello, here's my beautiful reporter!" yelled Marie. "Come and help me make these people see reason. They've got to give Charlie Chaplin a real part -- "

     

    In time, Frances Marion stormed New York. She wanted to write and Hollywood offered her nothing. I am always amused to remember that the only protection she took with her on that trip, for she had no money and no job, was a pocketful of references as a cook. I think I wrote her one myself, on my father's best stationery. "I'm a good cook," she said, "and I can always get a job cooking. I won't starve."

     

    When she was about to present those references to keep her from exactly that, she landed with the old World Film Company. She was there when Marie Dressler came to make a Tillie picture, and Marie asked William A. Brady to let the little Californian work on her story. It wasn't a success, that picture, but it was to pay great dividends to those two amazing women, for it cemented their friendship.

     

    One of the sequences was at Coney Island. A frantic director, searching everywhere for his star, found her in the Fun House with Frances Marion and what looked like a million kids. The kids were having more fun with Dressler than they were with the Fun House.

     

    When the day's shooting was over, Marie and Frances drove home in a slightly ramshackle car furnished by the studio. It had been a grand and hilarious day. they were silent with that silence of perfect friendship. To Frances it seemed almost too good to be true. Her first months in New York had been pretty tough. She was working 20 hours a day even now. But she had a job, she had Marie, all was well.

     

    Inside the house, they found a telegram saying that Frances's older sister, a famous beauty and a great musician, the idol of the family, had died suddenly and tragically in San Francisco.

     

    The world rocked beneath Frances's feet. She had loved her sister better than anything else in the world. She was worn out with the struggle she had been through in New York. The blow almost killed her.

     

    "I think," she told me, "that I would have been finished if it hadn't been for Marie."

     

    They took Frances to the hospital in a complete nervous and physical collapse. And there Marie Dressler began months and months of struggle to bring the girl back from that borderland where she lay so quietly, so unprotestingly ready to slip over the divide.

     

    Every single day Marie was there. Sometimes she just sat holding the girl's slim hand, smiling encouragement, pouring forth her own superabundant vitality. When Frances could not bear to have anyone else touch her, Marie nursed her. When she could not sleep, Marie sat in the dark room crooning gentle songs. Day after day, she cooked things and lugged them to the hospital and fed them to Frances with her own hand. As Frances began to get a little better, Marie read to her, hour after hour, all day long, to keep her from thinking, and the magic vibration of that loving voice stilled the tormented spirit.

     

    When she was well enough to be moved, Marie took her to her own home and kept her for months. She was broke herself, and worried. But Frances never knew of that until long afterward.

     

    ***********

     

    Frances Marion, the most influential woman inside the vast business organization of motion pictures, thought of these things and many others as she sat with that letter from Elisabeth Marbury in her hand.

     

    "Why shouldn't Marie stage a comeback in pictures?"

     

    Ten minutes later Frances Marion had summoned a swift secretary, locked her door, tied her hair back, and gone to work like a madwoman, rewriting the part of Ma Callahan in a story called The Callahans and the Murphys.

     

    Three days later she went to Irving Thalberg, presiding genius of the MGM studio and her own devoted friend.

     

    "There's only one person in the world can play Ma Callahan," said Frances Marion. "I've written it especially for her. You've got to get Marie Dressler."

     

    "Oh, I don't believe we could do that," said Irving. "It would cost too much. You can't get those big people away from the stage unless you give them big dough, and we can't afford it for this picture."

     

    Marie's bluff had been almost too good! "Maybe I can fix that," said Frances.

     

    That night, Marie's phone rang again. Marie was very busy making herself a new dress. She took a few more stitches, swore at the telephone, and then answered it. California was calling.

     

    "Take the next train for Hollywood," said Frances Marion. "Never mind packing. Just hurry. And no back talk."

     

    "You're getting pretty fresh," said Marie Dressler. "You need me. I'll be there -- and God bless you!" The next day Marie Dressler and Nella Webb left for Hollywood.

     

    Came the night of the first preview of THE CALLAHANS AND THE MURPHYS, and in the back row of a big Hollywood theater sat Marie Dressler, Nella Webb, Jimmy Forbes, and Frances Marion. The silver sheet began to flow.

     

    The audience began to laugh. They roared, they screamed, they rolled in the aisles. Marie and Nella and Jimmy and Frances wept.

     

    Never in Hollywood history had there been such a preview. In the lobby afterward, the crowds spotted Marie. They almost mobbed her. Who was this new woman who could make them laugh like that? Old-timers in the New York theater could have told them, but Marie Dressler was new to this generation of picture fans. The four friends went home and sat up all night talking.

     

    "The stars were right," said Nella Webb.

     

    "I knew you'd do it, you old hotel keeper!" said Jimmy Forbes.

     

    "Your future is all set," said Frances. "You'll be such a hit in this picture you'll never have another day off."

     

    Marie broke down completely. "I'm a fool," she sobbed, "but I'm so happy!"

     

    They went to bed assured of Marie's success. But they had reckoned without the Irish. And it is never safe to do that. I'm one of 'em, and I know. The Irish decided to resent THE CALLAHANS AND THE MURPHYS. Their race had been insulted.

     

    They resented so long, loudly, and vociferously that the picture was withdrawn. Very few people saw it. Marie's great performance went on to the ash heap.

     

    Oblivion swept over her. For two years -- two long, difficult years -- Marie sat in Hollywood, waiting. It hardly seems possible now, but it is true.

     

    ***********

     

    Today, Marie's pictures play 15, 16 weeks in the leading theatres of Berlin, Paris, London, Rome. Today she is the leading box-office attraction in American theaters. But for those two years after the disaster of the Irish, nobody, American or European, made a move.

     

    Marie sat on her hilltop, in a small rented house, made friends, laughed and prayed. Quite literally. No one I have ever met believes more deeply in prayer than Marie Dressler.

     

    She doesn't necessarily have to go to a church. She can pray anywhere -- in her garden, on a studio set, in a crowded street. And she does.

     

    She has one favorite prayer. "If you pray this and mean it," she told me once when I had gone to her with some of my own troubles, "it's all you'll ever need."

     

    Softly she quoted that verse written many years ago by Louise Wheatley:

     

    "Teach me to love not those who first love me,

    But all the world, with that rare purity

    With that true ecstacy of broad outreaching thought

    Which bears no earthly taint

    But holds in its embrace -- humanity.

    Teach me to love."

     

    "You see," said Marie, "we shan't be judged by what we say, nor even by what we believe. We shall be judged by the record our fellow man has kept of us in his heart. There may be no great book in heaven where is written down each of our acts. But the sum of what we are, what we have done and been, is all written down for Christ to see in the thoughts others have of us. If they love us, I guess He'll take us in all right. That's all the prayer you need -- 'Teach me to love.'"

     

    ***********

     

    It was Frances Marion, upon whom Marie has showered so much love over the years, who once more brought opportunity to Marie's door. And all Marie has ever needed was opportunity.

     

    Frances took the script of ANNA CHRISTIE to write because she saw Marie Dressler in the part of Marthy. And she sat up nights building up that part. Then she went to Irving Thalberg and suggested Marie. Irving laughed. The director laughed. Everybody laughed. But behind that Madonna-like face of Frances is the dogged determination of a boa constrictor. When they threw her out, she went right back again.

     

    "It can't do any harm to give her a test," she insisted.

     

    And finally, because she was Frances Marion, they shot the test. Marie got the part of Marthy, to Greta Garbo's Anna Christie.

     

    It had long been a tradition in the theater that Dressler would steal any scene she was in. When Jack Pearl went into her last stage show, most of his scenes were with Marie.

     

    "They warned me," said Jack Pearl. "They told me she'd steal my dandruff if I had any. My friends told me I was a fool, because the best I could get would be just a straight man for Dressler, and I was supposed to be a comic myself. 'Why,' Jake Shubert told me, 'you watch her. She'll even pick flies off you when you're saying your lines.'

     

    "So on the opening night, out of town in New Haven, I made up my mind that she wouldn't steal the scenes from me. I knew a trick or two myself. I'd be there! I dashed into our opening number, which was in a taxicab.

     

    "I shouted. I never gave Marie a chance to finish a line. I ad-libbed and I muffed her cues. I did business while she was talking. I talked while she was doing her gags.

     

    "But she stole the act just the same!

     

    "When we came off, she took one look at my face and started laughing. Then she took me off in a corner and gave me a good scolding for trying to steal her scene! Can you imagine? But we became such good friends -- every matinee night we went up to her place and she made me pig knuckles and sauerkraut -- and she was very good to me. We learned to work together so that we got the most for both of us out of our stuff. But I'll say this: I would hate to play a scene with her if she didn't like me. The audience would probably think she was doing a monologue."

     

    In pictures, she was true to the tradition. She stole ANNA CHRISTIE from Greta Garbo, which was a feat of no mean proportions.

     

    ***********

     

    Each year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is composed of all the people who work regularly in motion pictures and which formulates the laws which control the industry itself, gives a prize for the best acting done during the year. That prize is awarded by popular vote among the members, and it means a great deal.

     

    In 1931, Marie Dressler was given that medal for her performance as Min in Frances Marion's story MIN AND BILL.

     

    The Academy dinner at which the award was made will never be forgotten by anyone who was there. As I sat watching the crowd in that brilliant, beautifully decorated room, a crowd composed of every great figure in the motion-picture field, I tried to figure out why it seemed different from the run of such functions.

     

    When Norma Shearer rose and, in one of the sweetest, warmest speeches I have ever heard, presented the award to Marie Dressler, "the grandest old trouper of them all," I knew why it was different.

     

    That gathering of stars, producers, directors, actors, cameramen, technicians, and authors was inspired by the deep respect of artists for a great artist, by unselfish delight in the victory of a great woman, by their real love for Marie Dressler.

     

    In my many years in Hollywood I have never seen anything like the reception given Marie Dressler when she got to her feet that night. No one else in the business ever has or ever could stir our hearts as she did.

     

    Motion pictures are a hard game, a heartbreaking game. Competition is terrific. Intrigue and jealously are ever-present. Rivalry is in proportion to the greatness of the rewards. In the endless battle for success, to gain it, to keep it, to regain it, there are many throats cut and many hearts trampled. Believe me.

     

    Yet that night Marie Dressler won such applause as I have never heard equaled, from her own people, and without one dissenting word.

     

    She won the Academy medal -- the highest honor for ability in the power of the industry to bestow -- and it was laid at her feet with love and with admiration which no other star has ever achieved.

     

    The polls of trade magazines and exhibitors everywhere show her to be the outstanding box-office leader. Her fan mail, the crowds who follow her, the invitations from the greatest people in the land, attest her popularity with people -- her popularity as a woman, not just as an actress.

     

    The little girl who at 13 started out to earn a living for her mother, the little girl without friends, money, influence, or beauty, has come a long way. Yet Marie is not flattered by her success. She is touched, deeply touched.

     

    Besides, she isn't thinking much about her success. She is thinking of other things -- her friends, her work, her charities.

     

    Today she plans for the future like a young girl. Fifty or sixty years from now Marie has things she expects to be doing.

     

    ***********

     

    All her life Marie had wanted a home. She has it now, a stately Georgian mansion in Beverly Hills. She calls it Loafhaven, but her friends call it Loafheaven.

     

    When she bought this house, some of Marie's friends started to tell her how she should furnish it. Marie only chuckled.

     

    "I've sat in too many uncomfortable chairs in too many white drawing rooms in Hollywood," she said. "This is going to be a place where people can be comfortable and sit around in their carpet slippers if they want to."

     

    Interior decorators may not think much of Marie Dressler's home. But to me, it is a symbol of the woman herself.

     

    It is HOME. There isn't a chair or a couch you don't sink into.

     

    The rugs are Oriental -- at least some of them are, because part of them are hooked rugs. If you don't like an early American chair, you can sit in a Spanish one, and if you don't look right in a French mirror you can see yourself in a plain walnut one.

     

    She has treasured everything that anyone has ever given her. Just because it doesn't fit in with the scheme of things or because some decorator tells her it's wrong, she won't allow it to be relegated to the attic, as most of us do. The large hand-painted lamp with the pink shade may give you a start. But a dear old lady made the lamp shade for Marie, and Marie sits under its glowing light comforted by the love that inspired the gift. Marie loves home for its comforts and associations for herself and for her friends.

     

    There are flowers everywhere, lots of plants, birds singing, a funny mongrel pup curled on the best footstool, dozens of little favors from different parties, framed photographs of dozens of her friends, music filling the air always.

     

    Mamie -- dear Mamie, who has been with Marie, rich and poor, salary or no salary, good times and bad, for 20 years -- will bring coffee on a Chinese tray in Dresden china cups and set it down on an Italian carved table. But it will be the best coffee you ever drank. (Marie probably will look pathetic and try to sneak a cup. But Mamie will give her one look and say, 'Miss Mary, you know you can't have no coffee at night.' Marie will beg, but she won't get the coffee.)

     

    That is where I would like to leave this life story of Marie Dressler.

     

    Not at a magnificent first night where it takes a cordon of policemen to rescue Marie Dressler from the admiring crowds. Not at some stately dinner at the home of the Van Rensselaers in Santa Barbara. Not at the Olympic Ball given by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, where Marie Dressler stole the titled dignitaries from all the young beauties of the screen. Not even in a packed theater, where audiences laugh and weep under the sway of her art, nor at the radio where she speaks to millions to aid the unemployed.

     

    No. Let's leave Marie Dressler in the home that is so much more a real home than any other I know, with Mamie hovering devotedly in the background, with Frances Marion curled up on a big comfortable sofa, with many friends coming and going, and with Marie her bit of sewing always in her hands, her grand old face illumined by its deep rich smile, with Marie looking up and forward -- forward to the many splendid things that are ahead.

     

    ***********THE END***********

     

     

    Trivia -- Week of March 14, 2005

    in Trivia

    Posted

    Greetings, everybody! Once again, my apologies for no trivia question on Friday. For some reason, I wasn't able to log into the boards until Sunday afternoon. I couldn't even set up a new account to do it with! Talk about being on the outside looking in . . .

     

    But, anyway, I'm back with more trivia and the final installment of The Private Life of Marie Dressler, which I'll be posting sometime later today or Tuesday.

     

    So let's get to it!

    The Private Life of Marie Dressler

    in Trivia

    Posted

    Now for Mary Lou, and the millions who await (well, it seems that way, anyway), here's Part 3 of The Private Life of Marie Dressler by Adela Rogers St. Johns.

     

    I wish I could post some of the pictures that originally appeared with this series. One of my favorites is Marie mugging on the set of MIN AND BILL with co-star Wallace Beery and publisher Bernarr MacFadden. Then there's Marie striking a declamatory pose in typical female athelete's garb in "The College Widower" from the 1906 Broadway show Higgledy Piggledy. And Marie dancing with Charlie Chaplin in the Mack Sennett film TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE. And . . . well, let's get pick up the thread where we left off . . .

     

     

    PART THREE -- "I'M THROUGH" (Liberty, May 27, 1933)

     

    A riotous success in Tillie's Nightmare.

     

    Broke -- but living at the Ritz.

     

    Touring Europe on a shoestring or a la grand dame.

     

    Cooking spaghetti for Caruso, Godowsky, and Fritz Kreisler, who forthwith sang and played for their supper.

     

    Starring with Weber and Fields.

     

    Waiting in outer offices while managers slipped out the back door.

     

    Riding in [Central] Park with Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish.

     

    The 25 years of Marie Dressler's life which followed her first stardom in Lady Slavey contained just about everything in the way of ups and downs. Only, nothing could get Marie down!

     

    Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

    Weep, and you weep alone.

     

    Those words, written by her friend Ella Wheeler Wilcox, were Marie's creed. They took some living up to, because Marie can get just as mad, just as hurt, just as discouraged as anybody else. But she did it.

     

    And, up or down, she went right on registering the triumph of personality which is the real history of her life.

     

    "Of all the people I have met," said Enrico Caruso, "she is the greatest personality. With Marie, it is impossible not to enjoy life."

     

    So, when he was the star of the Metropolitan Opera Company, he used to go three and four times a week to her apartment and sing madly until dawn. There, too, came Leopold Godowsky, great pianist, to play away his weary moods. And Fritz Kreisler with his magic violin.

     

    "I have seen EMMA three times," Kreisler wrote her recently from Europe. "I rejoice in it. I am prouder than ever that for so many years you have allowed me to call you friend."

     

    It has been said that a man may consider himself lucky if he can count two real friends. Marie Dressler can count dozens. They are proof of her worth. And if she's your friend, she's your friend, right or wrong. If you committed a murder, her first concern would be to get you out of trouble if possible.

     

    Yet, she made enemies, too. For she had always certain standards of life and conduct, and a self-respect that never hesitated between right and personal advantage.

    And, it would be folly to deny, Marie has a temper that now and then blows off like the big gun on a battleship. Heaven protect you if you're within range.

     

    Around the Lambs Club they still tell with chuckles of her famous battle with Jake Shubert.

     

    Marie was then in the Winter Garden show. There were no Sunday night performances, but the Shuberts had got around that by presenting a series of "Sunday night concerts" in which the Winter Garden artists appeared. It was regarded by artists who gave eight shows a week as an imposition and, in spirit at least, a breach of the contract agreements.

     

    One Saturday matinee, Jake appeared in Marie's dressing room and told her that she had been billed to appear the following Sunday evening.

     

    Two seconds later, the company was astounded to see Jake Shubert flying across the stage, through the passageway behind the boxes, and up the aisle of the empty theater. Two leaps behind him came Dressler, armed with a large stage brace.

     

    Needless to say, Marie Dressler did not appear at the Sunday night concert.

     

    It was a disagreement with A.L. Erlanger that on several occasions probably kept Marie from playing in New York. For Abe Erlanger was czar of the American theater, and if he was "off" anybody, they didn't work. His power was tremendous. In time, he formed a theatrical trust which is history both in the theater and in the courts.

     

    While Marie was out on the road with Lady Slavey, Erlanger bought in with George Lederer, as he eventually bought in on most stage pieces.

     

    Marie was taken ill during the tour and the show closed. Now, Czar Erlanger didn't believe in his stars being ill. The truth, he opined, was that Marie was sick of playing the sticks and wanted to get back to New York.

     

    It happened that Erlanger was wrong. Marie was really ill. Besides, she always loved playing on the road. Therefore, she was naturally furious at the injustice of the czar's attitude, and told him so without mincing words.

     

    Great lady though she is, Dressler on a rampage is no diplomat. Her words must have got under Abe's skin.

     

    Because, during the famous Actors Equity strike of 1919, when the actors closed all theaters and fought for decent contracts and pay whie rehearsing, Abe Erlanger refused to go to any of the meetings held between committees of managers and committees of actors.

     

    "Look here, Abe, we need you at these meetings," another manager said to him. "You ought to come. You'd have a good effect on these actors."

     

    Little Abe shook his head stubbornly. Nothing would persuade him to go near them.

     

    "But why not, Abe?" someone insisted.

     

    "Well," said the czar with a shrug, "that Dressler'll be there. And she would sorta look at me and say "Vell, Abe?' and -- no, I guess I won't go. I would be no good to you if Marie's there. You should be able to tell what she'll say!"

     

    The actors broke the trust, won the strike, and the theater of today is run upon rules drawn by the Actors Equity Association.

     

    ***********

     

    When, even after so great a hit as she had made, she found herself unable to get a job, with her father and mother to take care of and not a nickel laid away, Marie didn't hesitate. She started the now historic peanut stand at Coney Island. There were other things she might have done, but Marie was never one for the easiest way.

     

    She's proud of that summer, too. She once took Alice Neilson and Frances Marion down to Coney Island for the day and pointed out the exact spot. There are Hollywood stars who prefer to conceal their early struggles. Not Marie. She loves 'em!

     

    But the peanut stand was a passing episode.

     

    "I never in my life turned down an honest job," I once heard Marie tell a young actress who had refused a contract because the billing offered didn't match her view of her own importance. "Keep working, always. It brings luck. If you can't get what you want, take what you can get. The smallest job is better than none."

     

    There was in New York at the time an up-and-coming young broker named Joe Immerman. He was devoted to Marie and he objected seriously to this Coney Island business. Joe Weber had just had his historic battle with Lew Fields and was about to produce his own show. Upon him Joe Immerman brought to bear all his salesmanship. His show would be no good without Marie.

     

    "I heard she walked out on Erlanger," said Joe Weber.

     

    "You know Marie never walked out on anybody."

     

    "Probably wants a lot of money," said Weber.

     

    Immerman shot high. "Five hundred."

     

    They compromised on $400 and Marie joined the cast of Higgledy-Piggledy.

     

    Even then she wouldn't marry the poor young man, but he remained her faithful friend and for years managed her business and handled her investments. Whenever he had a really good thing, Marie would pass it around to the entire company and browbeat Joe Weber into taking advantage of it. They always made money. Keeping it is something else again.

     

    The engagement with Weber was one of the happiest times of her life. In that show, she did her never-to-be-forgotten burlesques of The Girl of the Golden West and The College Widow.

     

    "They used to say Marie was temeramental," said Joe Weber. "Guess she was pretty quick on the trigger. But I had only one trouble with her. She wanted to run everything. Just her big heart, that's all. She always wanted to do something, and sometimes it wasn't the thing for her to do. She cost me an awful good costumer one time. After he had the chorus all dressed right, Marie would go round and fix 'em up a little -- tip their hats or fuss with their dresses. Miss Fixit -- that was Marie."

     

    To this day, Marie can never let anything alone. If she buys a hat from Chanel herself, she will inevitably take it apart. If she buys a Paris gown, she always adds something or puts the skirt hind side foremost.

     

    ***********

     

    In that show, Marie turned thief. In Hollywood, they were to know her as the worst picture thief on earth. Just let her in a picture and she'd steal it from Garbo.

     

    Anna Held was supposed to be the feminine star of Higgedly-Piggledy. After a few weeks, she resigned, and the papers called Marie the "star obscurer."

     

    Anna Held was a great beauty and was the first great exponent of sex appeal, though the term then hadn't yet been coined.

     

    "I always felt sorry for beautiful women," Marie told me. "Beauty is a curse. You depend on it, and when it goes, there is nothing to fall back on. Personality -- that's the thing. Concentrate on that. Develop personality. I'm not conceited, but I could always take a roomful of people away from any beauty. Why? Because I'd work to amuse and entertain 'em and make 'em happy. When they'd had a real good look at the beauty they were finished, and they'd come over to Dressler for laughs. Every woman can develop personality; not all can be beautiful."

     

    As proof of Marie's statement, Jack Pearl, of Baron Munchhausen fame, told me of a party given by the Shuberts for Mistinguette, the great French beauty, and Alice Delysia, a European sensation.

     

    "In those days, nobody on this side of the ocean was good enough for the Shuberts," said Jack Pearl. "They were always importing talent from Europe. The night of their party for Mistinguette and Delysia, both of whom they had brought over, they made Marie thier offical hostess -- she was in the Delysia show.

     

    "Late in the evening I met Jake Shubert, wandering around sunk in gloom.

     

    "'What's wrong, Jake?' I said. 'The party's a big success.'

     

    "'Sure,' says Jake. 'A big success for Marie Dressler! Look she's got everybody around her -- newspaper men and all. What's the use of my spending thousands -- millions -- bringing over beauties from Europe to give a party for Marie Dressler? I ask you!'"

     

    Beginning with the Weber and Fields days, through Tillie's Nightmare -- her greatest success and one of the greatest successes of the theater -- Marie shone on Broadway for 10 magic years. Within that period, she made her first picture, TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE, a screen version of Tillie's Nightmare.

     

    What an uproar she caused around that Mack Sennett studio! And all for an unknown guy named Charlie Chaplin.

     

    "They don't appreciate him!" she stormed to anybody who would listen. "He's a great artist. I saw him in London. If they'll give him a chance, he'll knock 'em dead. I'm going to have him for a big part in my picture if I have to call out the marines."

     

    Finally, Mack Sennett, worn out, gave in. she was probably crazy, but he was too tired to care. Chaplin got a big part in TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE. The rest is history.

     

    ************

     

    It was during those successful years that Marie made her first contact with "high society."

     

    Those were the days of the Four Hundred. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish ruled with an iron hand. She was a great woman with a magnificent sense of humor and a brilliant mind. Under her reign, society achieved its only high point in America.

     

    Marie was one of her favorites. they first met when Mrs. Fish engaged Marie to entertain visiting royalty at a dinner. Instantly the social dictator saw in the actress every quality that she most admired -- humor, courage, naturalness, and honesty.

     

    In those days, actresses were not "accepted" in society. They were, in fact, considered "fast." If you were an actress, your reputation bore a tinge of scarlet. Marie didn't escape unscathed, and it is rather amusing now to realize that many people in the early 20th century might have told you that Marie was a "bad woman" because she wore tights. But no one questioned anything Mrs. Fish chose to do. When society recovered from the shock of seeing its queen driving in the Park day after day with Marie Dressler beside her in the elegant victoria, it was all over. Invitations to impregnable Newport poured in. Dressler was invited first as a fad, because Mrs. Fish had taken her up. She remained as a friend, because they had found, as Mrs. Fish had done, that she was a grand person. Her friendship with Mrs. Fish lasted until the end of that amazing woman's life.

     

    Besides being an actress and wearing tights, which she did on only two occasions, Marie doubtless suffered from the fact that she always was, and still is, tremendously popular with men. Twenty years ago, narrow-minded folk were wont to place the worst construction upon gay comradeship between the sexes. It could have but one meaning. Yet, here was Marie Dressler constantly seen about with such famous New York beaux as Frederick Townsend Martin, O.H.P Belmont, Stanford White, Steve Elkins, Alfred Henry Lewis, Harry Lehr, Moncure Robinson, and Berry Wall.

     

    Marie never loved but one man in all her life. His name was Jim Dalton. He was a big, handsome red-headed Irishman. They were first introduced on a train going from New York to Philadelphia. From that day until he died in 1921, they loved each other with devotion and fidelity.

     

    When he was mortally ill, as he was for two years, he was kept alove by her love. If she was away, he visibly faded. When she returned, life flowed again.

     

    People who knew them during those years say it was not love Jim Dalton gave her, but idolatry. They remember that after a hard performance, he used to come backstage and kneel down and rub her feet, to rest them from the long hours of standing and dancing.

     

    Marie herself never speaks of him. I think she cannot. When he died, Marie closed that chapter -- and went on. But the memory of a great love is there.

     

    The little mother for whose sake Marie first venture on the stage loved long enough to see her "ugly duckling" become a swan. The last years of her life were spent in a beautiful country home at Bayside, Long Island. While she lived, she was Marie's first thought. If the first half of Anne Koerber's life was hard, her daughter made the last half close to heaven.

     

    After her death, Marie made a final break with her father. He went to live with Marie's sister May, who had married and had a home in England. Marie supported him until he died, but she never forgave him.

     

    ***********

     

    The most interesting part of Marie's life begins with the loss of her great place in the theater.

     

    From the beginning of the war in Europe until she went to Hollywood, things didn't go well for Marie. A few engagements in musical shows. A few pictures, including TILLIE'S TOMATO SURPRISE, which she produced herself. Vaudeville.

     

    The world went mad over youth. The flapper age descended. The temper of the theater changed.

     

    The great names of the day, the contemporaries who had shone with her, had faded. Lillian Russell, Pete Daly, Weber and Fields, Fay Templeton, Sam Bernard, Mabel Barrison, Frankie Bailey, Aubrey Boucicault, Emma Carus, May Irwin, Dan Daly, Harry Woodward, Virginai Earle, Eddie Foy, Digby Bell -- where were they?

     

    Marie Dressler's genius was swamped beneath the passion for youth that came during and after the war.

     

    But it was then, when most women sit back and let the world drift by, when they give way to bitter resentment or quiet old age, that Marie Dressler showed her true greatness.

     

    Don't think she liked it! She was a proud woman, of fiery temperament. She hated the humiliation, she hated the wasted talent, she was discouraged when they said she was through. More than that, she still had to earn a living. She had never saved much money, and what she had saved had been lost by an unwise investment.

     

    But she didn't give way to any of those things. No longer a stage star, she had made herself a figure in American life. That is why she was ready for her great comeback.

     

    Elisabeth Marbury told me a story which illustrates Marie's viewpoint during that time. Elisabeth Marbury was a great figure in the artistic and cultural life of New York. Her invitations were coveted by every celebrity who trod Manhattan's pavements. When I went to tea at the famous little house in Sutton Place, just a few days before she died, Katharine Cornell had been there for lunch, Hendrik van Loon had spent an hour there, and Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt was just leaving.

     

    If you want a picture of Elisabeth Marbury, think of Marie Dressler in LET US BE GAY. That was a perfect portrayal of Elisabeth Marbury, who was for years one of Marie's closest friends.

     

    "Marie came to me some time in the early 1920s and told me she was going to Italy to live," said "Bessie" Marbury. "She had very little money. In New York, she could gain nothing new. In Italy, she could live well and absorb all that Italy had to offer. She wanted to learn, to study, to broaden her mind, to become familiar with the art treasures there. Her idle time, she said would thus enrich her, instead of just being a time for disappointment and worry."

     

    ***********

     

    No woman in America did greater work during the war. The record leaves no doubt about that.

     

    In the Liberty Loan drive, Marie sold more bonds than any other individual, speaking 141 times in 29 days, never to less than 5,000 people. Her speeches were dynamic, flashing with humor, spangled with tears. I heard her speak once in Los Angeles, and I will never forget it. She swept that crowd to white-hot patriotism in five minutes of as fine mob oratory as was ever delivered.

     

    But she began her war work long before that -- and continued it long after. Most of us worked hard while the bands played and the flags waved. We cheered the boys when they came home. Then we forgot. Marie went every day for three years to some hospital for war veterans and spent hours singing, playing, telling yarns.

     

    Moreover, no honest story of her life can ignore her ceaseless activity for charity.

     

    Marie came to the conclusion that charity on any large scale must be in the hands of proper organizations. by appearing at benefits for these organizations, she could raise more money than millionaires could afford to give. Her time and genius should be her gifts.

     

    Anne Morgan, sister of J.P. Morgan and herself one of the real philanthropists of America, spoke to me of Marie Dressler in a way that actually made me cry.

     

    "There is no woman," she said, "who stands for higher service to humanity, for finer work with women, for more years of consistent devotion to the cause of charity, than Marie Dressler. I have worked with her for 20 years, and I know.

     

    "Literally, Marie could sell ice cream to an Eskimo. In the early days of the war, some New York women began organized relief work. We started shops where we sold whatever we could lay our hands on.

     

    "Every day Marie would appear. As soon as she came in, it was like a dynamo charging the room. She could take the worst contributions we had and sell them.

     

    "Someone gave us a lot of hats. Without meaning to be catty, it looked as though that was the only way they could get rid of them. Marie took over the lot. What she couldn't sell in the shop, she took out on the street. She'd put one on -- at an angle only Marie can achieve -- give it a whirl, and in two minutes have a crowd around her, roaring with laughter. In three minutes she'd have sold that hat for $50. In 20 minutes, the lot was gone.

     

    "Marie Dressler was one of the founders of the American Woman's Association. Without her help, we could never have built this clubhouse."

     

    The American Woman's Association is an organization with thousands of members representing 150 vocations. Some years ago, a group of women, among them Anne Morgan, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt, Ida M. Tarbell, Anna Steese Richardson, and Dr. Mary Crawford, saw the need of an organization which would women meet the changed conditions following upon their economic independence and their entrnace into new and wider fields. Thus began the AWA.

     

    The vision of a clubhouse where working women could combine an intellectual life with comfort and beauty at a very low cost was the next step. Two million dollars was needed.

     

    In 1925, Marie Dressler was drafted. She organized benefits. She wrote and appeared in plays. She handled radio programs. She made speeches.

     

    No one did more to raise that beautiful clubhouse, where today thousands of women find peace and culture, than Dressler.

     

    In that connection, there is one story which can now be told for the first time -- and this one is on Marie.

     

    While the sale of bonds to build the clubhouse was on, Marie made a brief trip to Europe. While she was away, Anne Morgan and her committee made valiant attempts to interest the Rockefellers in the project and to get them to take a large number of bonds.

     

    But the Rockefellers, very conservative, were afraid that the idea was perhaps -- well, just a little -- wasn't it possibly a bit Bohemian? So Miss Morgan, with the purpose of demonstrating the complete propriety of the AWA, arranged a very special luncheon. All the committee members whose conservatism was beyond question were asked to be present.

     

    On the morning of the luncheon, Marie landed back in America. She called Anne Morgan's house and was told about the luncheon at the Ritz. "I'll go right over," said Marie.

     

    Everyone was delighted to see her. But Marie, in a very short time, decided that this meeting was a flop. It was deadly. No pep, no enthusiasm, no laughs! What these women needed was stirring up. She got to her feet.

     

    Her speech, I have been told by those who heard it, was one of the funniest ever made. It took in some of Marie's latest adventures in Paris -- probably largely fictitious -- and wound up with her now famous story about the time she asked a French taxi driver the meaning of the word derriere, and he told her that if she didn't know, nobody did. Within five minutes, the 50 selected guests were in hysterics.

     

    But the Rockefellers didn't buy any AWA bonds.

     

    "Somebody should have told me!" wailed Marie. "Never mind. I'll sell more bonds in a week than they'd have bought anyhow." And she made good.

     

    ***********

     

    Thus Marie filled the years when she was "not working." Sometimes she lived proudly at the Ritz, although it was in a hall bedroom and she made her own clothes. She acted as hostess at the Ritz Supper Club. She sold Florida real estate.

     

    She got into one deal that didn't turn out so well -- and only last year finished repaying a lot of money to investors, money for which she could never have been held legally or even morally responsible.

     

    But she wasn't happy. Acting was her profession. Could it be that she was really finished -- a has-been? Could it be that she would clown no more?

     

    Irvin Cobb, who says that Marie was created of some different clay than God used when he made the rest of us, met her at a dinner party in 1926.

     

    "I'm through, Irvin," she told him.

     

    "Marie," said Irvin, "you're never through till you admit it."

     

    "I don't admit it," said Marie, with a chuckle. "I'll never admit it. But I'm a minority of one. Most of these new managers around New York never heard of Marie Dressler. A few of 'em remember that I could clown once. But they think I'm too old now. So I'm going to Europe to live. I can open a hotel in Paris or sell dresses -- pick up a living like a sparrow. Yes, it looks as though Dressler is through -- and I don't like it."

     

    She bought her ticket.

     

    It was Nella Webb, her devoted friend of many years' standing, a friend dating back to the Lederer days, who kept her from sailing.

     

    Nella had been a famous monologist, traveling through Europe, America, and Australia. But she had given it up for astrology. She had become a devotee of the stars, and is now one of the most famous astrologists in New York. At that time, she and Marie had an apartment together on upper Broadway.

     

    "You can't go, Marie," said Nella. "The stars show great things for you -- greater things than you have ever had yet. In January -- on January 17, 1927 -- you're going to get a message offering you new work. You must listen to me!"

     

    "I'll give you until the 17th," said Marie.

     

    On the afternoon of January 17 Nella webb, Marie, and two of Marie's closest friends, artist Helena Dayton and the well-known writer Louise Barrett, sat in the living room of the apartment. They were all silent. The atmosphere was tense.

     

    On the stroke of five, the telephone rang.

     

    ***********

     

    And here we'll leave you 'til next week, with the conclusion of Adela Rogers St. Johns's life story of Marie Dressler, where you'll learn how screenwriter Frances Marion engineered Marie's comeback in the movies. As always, your additions and comments are welcome.

     

    Trivia -- Week of March 7, 2005

    in Trivia

    Posted

    Good morning, everybody! Just a reminder that I'll be posting Part III of The Private Life of Marie Dressler later today or Tuesday. Thanks for all your comments and good wishes on this series so far -- it's great to know that Marie Dressler still has a lot of fans in the 21st century, more than 70 years after she made her last films!

     

    Dressler's getting a lot of attention these days. One of her best-known movies, DINNER AT EIGHT, was released on DVD last week, and TCM airs it again on April 13. On the morning of April 29, TCM treats us to an MD quadruple feature marathon with THE GIRL SAID NO, POLITICS, REDUCING, and PROSPERITY (the last three with her frequent co-star Polly Moran). POLITICS is repeated on the May schedule (May 6, I think), and ANNA CHRISTIE will be aired on May 31 as part of a salute to Greta Garbo. So for those of us who love Marie Dressler, there's going to be a lot more to love in the coming months.

     

    Now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .

    Trivia -- Week of February 28, 2005

    in Trivia

    Posted

    Feaito's in first with the right answer! Una Merkel started off as a stand-in for Lillian Gish in WAY DOWN EAST (1920).

     

    Apologies to you, Mongo -- Hotmail delivery problems kept this from getting to you yesterday, and I didn't find out till early this morning. The best-laid plans . . .

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