coffeedan1927
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I have the Alpha Video DVD of this movie, and the print is EXCELLENT. The detail and depth of field are amazing. I don't see how you could get any better, and this DVD lists for only $6.95 -- a steal!
Compare this to the Criterion DVD, which lists for $24.95, where the only extra on the disc is Bruce Eder's audio commentary. If you can live without that, and the print quality is all that matters to you, the Alpha DVD is definitely the way to go.
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Wow, thanks everybody! This series has required a little more work than I thought, but it's a labor of love, and I'm glad you're all enjoying the series so far. To echo ML's sentiment: "God, I love this woman!"
Just a tidbit I thought I'd pass along: I found out that at the time this series was written, Marie Dessler was renting a house in Beverly Hills that was owned by Adela Rogers St. Johns, so presumably they saw a lot of each other. If so, this is one of the best things that came out of a landlady-tenant relationship!
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Wednesday's question: What film actress did Mae West say was "the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong"?
Good luck!
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A good guess and logical, ken . . . but incorrect!
Yesterday's answer: Baron von Geiger's pet dachshund in GRAND HOTEL was named Adolphus.
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Here we resume Adela Rogers St. Johns's series on the life of Marie Dressler. I've edited this installment a litrle more gently than the last. I reduced the first installment by about a third to keep the narrative flowing, but there are a few anecdotes that can stand by themselves, so I may be posting those separately at a later date.
Meanwhile, let's pick up where we left off . . .
PART TWO -- THE RISING STAR (Liberty, May 20, 1933)
Nearly 50 years after the girl Marie Dressler climbed aboard a dusty day coach and set her face toward a perilous future, a woman sat quietly in the front box of a New York theater. She sat far back, as though she wished to remain hidden from the crowd.
Upon the stage the Abbey Theater Players, a group of Irish actors who had taken New York by storm and won from critics and intelligentsia the highest praise ever accorded any theatrical company, were performing before a cultured audience.
As the final curtain descended, the door of the woman's box opened. A huge New York fireman, cap atilt, stood smiling.
"Will you be coming backstage for a minute, Marie?" he said. "The company knows you're here and they're crazy to have a word with you. They're too shy for asking themselves, so I said I'd bring you."
(She is Marie to every cop and fireman in the country. They appear to regard her as their special property or patron saint.)
With her hand upon the strong arm of the fireman, Marie Dressler made her way backstage. The Abbey Players, great artists every one, were drawn up in a line. As Miss Dressler walked toward them, there was a breathless pause, a salute, and then their leading player cried, "We can't believe it. We can't believe we are really seeing you. This is the happiest moment our company has ever had!"
During Marie Dressler's last trip to New York, a show called Music in the Air opened at the Alvin Theatre. It was forecast as one of the season's sure hits, and critics, authors, social leaders, stage stars, and radio celebrities were clamoring for tickets.
But Jerome Kern, dean of light-opera composers, with such hits as Show Boat and The Cat and the Fiddle to his credit, wasn't satisfied.
He told his manager: "Marie Dressler's in town. She gave me my first chance. She started singing my songs when nobody else believed in me. I want her at this opening. This show is the best thing I've ever done, and I want her to see it."
And Marie, who was supposed to be on doctor's orders to be resting, couldn't say no to a friend. She never can!
When she walked down the aisle that night upon the arm of her old friend Jimmy Forbes, one of the most brilliant audiences ever gathered in a theater rose en masse to greet her.
That has never, so far as I can find out, happened before at any New York opening. And that was only the beginning. Between acts she held court. Jane Cowl, Irving Berlin, Edna Ferber, Jack Pearl, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt -- everyone crowded about her while Marie sat between tears and laughter. She was, in truth, the first lady of the theater that night.
Journey's end -- a magnificent triumph for the plain, awkward daughter of Alexander and Anne Koerber.
***********
Certainly no one in the Nevada Opera Company, her first stage venture, expected any such future for her. In fact, when his new recruit, hired by letter, arrived upon the scene, Nevada himself was stunned by her youth, her size, and her obvious inexperience. After their first conversation, he was quite ready to call the whole thing off and send Miss Marie Dressler, aged 14, back where she came from.
And if he had?
In a way, Marie Dressler never belonged on the stage at all. She had no yearning for the footlights, none of the peacock traits that go with the actress temperament. She was a sturdy, buxom girl, selecting the only way open to make money for her mother.
"I ought to have had a dozen kids and made their clothes and done their washing and helped them to get on in the world," she said to me once. "It was only an accident that I got onto the stage. All my life I've missed something -- something that nature intended for me. Every day I miss the sons and daughters I ought to have had. But" -- and her smile was wistful -- "I suppose God balances everything. There are plenty of folks in the world who need mothering. The motherless and the childless find each other."
For a time, when she first joined the Nevada Opera Company, her fate trembled in the balance. Eventually Nevada shoved the part of Cigarette, in Under Two Flags, into her hand and told her to get busy.
It was the first triumph of the Dressler personality.
But the balance still trembled. Two things, two seemingly insurmountable things within the girl's own soul, all but sent her to oblivion. Two things which were to dog her entire stage and screen career: Her bad memory and her terrible stage fright. She couldn't, couldn't, memorize all those words.
***********
Probably in the whole world there is no one with such a bad memory as Marie Dressler. She remembers everything that happened, yes. But where or when are quite beyond her. She will scramble dates to the point where the San Francisco earthquake took place just after the World War.
"What difference does it make?" says Dressler, when anybody asks her about the date of some happening in her life. "Who cares?"
And to me she explained it further: "The thing is to regard life as a whole. Take it in a big sweep, take in the full scope of it. Remember the effect things had, what you learned from them, how you felt about them. But don't be fussy about details.
"More than that, I've forgotten a lot of things on purpose. You wouldn't go around burdening your friends with all the unpleasant things that ever happened to you. Well, why should you do it yourself?"
Many a bewildered author has sat out front on an opening night and listened to Dressler say lines he never, never heard before. Fortunately, they were usually just as good or better than the original ones.
When she and Lillian Russell played together, they used to create whole new scenes nightly. Marie would "go up" in her lines. And then the great beauty, who thought Marie the funniest person in the world, would get to laughing and forget her own. But the audience always seemed perfectly satisfied.
Learning her lines, as every Hollywood director knows, is a torture to Marie Dressler. After three or four bad starts she will get in a towering rage with herself, go off in her dressing room, and come back, after 15 minutes of agonizing concentration, letter-perfect.
Through sheer grit and self-discipline, she forced herself to meet and master this difficulty when she studied her first role in that hotel bedroom. At first she felt utterly hopeless and defeated. She walked the little room until the floor shook; she wept, swore, and kicked the furniture until the man in the adjoining room hammered on the wall.
She packed her suitcase and determined to go home.
Then came the thought of her mother. Her mother's need. All the dreams she had treasured of doing things for her mother, buying her fur coats and pretty dresses, seeing to it that her mother never had to work again. Was she to sacrifice all this to her own weakness?
White with rage, her chin stuck out inches, Marie Dressler sat down on the edge of that funny brass bed and took the part in two clenched hands. Next morning she was ready for rehearsal.
***********
The opening night, in a small Michigan town, she was overcome by stage fright so violent that for a time it seemed that the show could not go on.
During the 40 years that she was in the theater Marie Dressler suffered from stage fright that was pitiful.
A very different opening night, years later, saw the same thing repeated. The great reunion of Weber and Fields at the famous Casino. Seats had been auctioned as high as $60 apiece. William Randolph Hearst had paid $940 for a box. Diamond Jim Brady was there with his guests. Broadway held its breath before the list of stars and the glitter of a production such a had never been seen before.
And in the wings, Marie Dressler, the favorite of them all, held on to the scenery to keep herself upright, while a sweat of agony ruined her make-up.
Joe Weber tried to reassure her. "I can't do it, Joe," she said through chattering teeth. I can't go on! My legs won't move."
But she did go on, and once she felt the impact of that audience she was the hit of the show.
***********
Last year, when she appeared on Rudy Vallee's radio hour in a beautiful speech which no one who heard it will ever forget, she collapsed completely when she came off. Jack Pearl, the most popular comedian on the air today, was waiting outside for her. He was her partner in the last stage show she ever did.
"Honestly," the Baron Munchhausen told me, "she just fell into my arms, trembling like a leaf. In every performance we played together 12 years ago, she was like that. Every night she'd have stage fright so bad I thought she'd never go on.
"Maybe you don't know what stage fright is. There's nothing like it. She'd stand there, shaking, and say 'I can't face them, Jack! I can't remember a single word. I'm sick at my stomach. I'm no good, anyhow. I tell you, I can't go out there and face them!'
"Never saw anybody get in such a state. And this is Jack Pearl talking, not the Baron. I was dere, Sharlie."
He smiled, an engaging dark-eyed smile, before he said, "But I loved her like I love nobody but my own mother."
That initial stage fright caught the youthful Marie unprepared. It was sheer nightmare. She wanted only to turn and run. But she learned right there the lesson she has never forgotten -- which last year sent her on to the set when only supreme courage upheld her: "The show must go on."
With trembling knees she somehow got on to the stage and and stood petrified. And to this day she doesn't remember one thing that happened after that. But -- the show went on.
***********
Just when Marie Dressler discovered that she was a clown is difficult to say. The woman who made an almost incredible number of speeches during the Liberty Loan drive, who led the Actors Equity battle, who was the intimate friend of Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish (the greatest social leader America ever had), who had dined with four Presidents, who helped Anne Morgan found the American Women's Association, who thrilled every critic in America with her Marthy in ANNA CHRISTIE and won the Academy medal for that heartbreaking portrayal in MIN AND BILL -- that woman was for years the greatest of clowns and wanted to be nothing else. Probably she came face to face with her destiny the first time she saw that Gilbert and Sullivan masterpiece, The Mikado.
There has never been written a greater comedy part than the old harridan, Katisha, of The Mikado. It is a gem among comedy roles. Properly played, it will "steal the show" every time. As she watched that part with its wit and picturesque humor, its magnificant songs, Marie felt that it must be hers.
With her own native shrewdness she set to work to prepare herself for it. She got the book of The Mikado, and began to study the part of Katisha. Prayerfully and carefully she studied it and, alone in hotel bedrooms, she rehearsed it.
One time a stage hand, arriving early to prepare the stage of a town opera house for a rehearsal, was amazed to hear a powerful voice shouting, "I have a left shoulder blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it!"
The stage hand sneaked around a flat and saw a tall, Amazonian young woman declaiming madly to an empty house. The sight of him did not in the least disconcert her. She turned and addressed him, with gestures: "Observe this ear."
"Huh?" said the bewildered stage hand glancing behind him to be sure that retreat was open.
The young woman advance upon him. "Observe this ear!" And then, giving him a poke in the ribs, she ordered, "Say 'Large.'"
"Large," said the stage hand obediently.
"Large?" roared the young woman. "Enormous! But think of its delicate internal mechanism."
She went into roars of laughter. Before he knew it, the stage hand was roaring with her. When the rest of the company arrived, they found Marie Dressler and a hysterical stage hand pounding each other on the back and saying "Large? Enormous!"
I wonder if, when the sobered stage hand thought about it afterward, he realized that he had assisted at the first great step forward step of a genius -- Marie Dressler secretly rehearsing for her as yet unassigned role of Katisha in The Mikado.
Fate, saluting a gallant adversary, finally gave in and presented her with an unexpected chance to play it. Agnes Halleck, who had always played the role, sprained her ankle.
"I have always felt a little guilty about that ankle," said Marie Dressler. "I used to pray every night that something would happen to her. And when they called the understudy, I actually tried hypnotizing her so that she wouldn't know her lines!"
The understudy didn't. Chaos resulted. The stage manager went mad. The company ran around in circles.
From the back of the stage came a tornado. The assembled actors scattered like dry leaves. The stage manager found himself in a powerful grip, facing a young woman who had also, it appeared, gone mad.
"I can play it -- I can sing it! I know it! Please let me play it -- please! The clothes fit me and everything!"
Opportunity knocked and Marie was ready. That night she played Katisha in The Mikado. I wish to heaven she could remember where, but she can't, and as she says, it really doesn't matter.
What does matter is that she justified her own judgment. The audience literally fell into the aisles. They howled for her. She "panicked 'em," and from then on, the choice comedy roles were hers. And in them she achieved the practice which gave her comedy technique for the big time when it arrived.
***********
During the five or six years that she worked on the road, before she got into New York, playing everything from the smallest tank towns to Chicago, Marie worked hard and played hard.
In one of those small touring companies with her was a beautiful blonde named May Montford. She is now Mrs. John Golden, wife of the great producer and one of the most beloved women in the life of the New York theater.
"There never was anyone like Marie," says Mrs. Golden. "Still isn't, for that matter.
"In those early days, if she wasn't in trouble she was laughing herself to death. She adored practical jokes and didn't care on whom she played them. We all adored her, but we never knew what was coming next. One April Fool's Day she put Epsom salt in the sugar bowl, and we nearly didn't give a performance that night.
"Her clothes, which she made herself, were strung all over the state -- and never, in all the time I knew her, did she succeed in getting her suitcase properly closed. It was always popping open. When I saw that scene from EMMA where the suitcase opened all over the station, I wondered if she hadn't suggested it from memory.
"She could no more help singing that a bird, and when we got into some little hotel at midnight she would charge down the hall singing at the top of her lungs. Doors would open and irate faces would appear, but the moment they saw Marie they began to laugh.
"We were all broke, of course, but Marie was always brokest. We got only eight dollars a week, and Marie sent half of that home to her mother and would lend the rest to anybody who needed it. And Marie had an enormous appetite. She wouldn't flirt with managers and she never noticed the stage-door johnnies, as we called them then. but the eyes she would make at men behind lunch counters would put Joan Crawford to shame. And she always got twice as big an order as the rest of us.
"One day one of the other girls protested about this, and the man said apologetically, 'Well, she looks like she could eat twice as much!'"
***********
During that same tour, Marie had her first romance. It was, as first romances are, an unhappy one. The man was connected with the theatrical profession, and he wanted Marie to leave the company and go to New York with him. Marie, with tears, refused.
From the Nevada Opera Company Marie went to the Robert Grau Players, and thence, after a brief visit to her family, she became a member of the George Baker Opera Company, with which she remained for three years.
"The three hardest years of my life," Marie once told a girl. "But they were the rock upon which my future was built."
The girl was beautiful Sally Eilers, and she had a small part in one of Marie's first big successes, LET US BE GAY, starring Norma Shearer. It was Sally's first talkie and she was having trouble with her lines. Marie, grumbling to herself for never being able to mind her own business, came to the rescue, took her off to a deserted corner of the set, and in a couple of days taught her the rudiments of speaking lines.
"You girls would be better off if you'd had three years like I did," Marie said to her impressively. "Those companies were the dramatic colleges. There we learned our trade. Why, in those three years I learned 40 operas. While we played in one, we were rehearsing another, and studying a third.
"One night I'd be Barbara in The Black Hussars -- what a part that was! -- and the next I'd be in the chorus. We didn't squawk about our parts either, and whether it was an audience of 300 in a tank town or 3,000 in Chicago, we did our best. More than that, we made our own costumes."
"I can do that, too, Miss Dressler," said Sally.
Marie's great laugh rang out. She kissed the girl, gave her a swift spank, and sent her away -- to stardom. For it was Marie's coaching that made Sally a hit in that part, and thus won her a chance to do BAD GIRL.
***********
In 1893, when Marie Dressler had been on the stage for eight years, George Lederer was New York's greatest producer. The old-timers call him "the man who made Broadway." He was the Ziegfeld of the Gay Nineties.
In his shows were Edna May, who scored a sensation in The Belle of New York; Pauline Chase, later England's favorite Peter Pan; the glorious Lotta Faust, Della Fox and above all, Lillian Russell.
In Washington, in the summer of 1893, George Lederer saw a musical play called The Robber of the Rhine. Its author was Maurice Barrymore, father of Lionel, Ethel, and John. Maurice was a great actor, but, it would appear, an indifferent playwright. After the first act, Lederer met the producer in the lobby.
"How'd you like the show?" he began.
Little George cocked a wise eye. "Who's the big girl on the end of the opening chorus?" was all he said.
Now well past 70, George Lederer is a brilliant talker and a walking history of early American theater.
"When I first saw Marie," he said, "she looked just like a great big doll that you'd see in a store window around Christmas."
He paused to light a big cigar, and when he spoke again it was gravely and impressively.
"I have been in show business a good many years," he said. "In all that time, Marie Dressler is the only artist I ever knew whom you couldn't replace. Once Marie had played a part, that was the end of it. You folded it up and threw it away. I tried lots of good troupers to follow her -- Trixie Friganza, Amelia Somerville. But it was no use. There is only one Marie Dressler."
Jack Pearl said something like that, too. This radio star has a deep love of the theater. "As far as I am concerned," he said, "and I mean it with all reverence -- there is only one God, one Lincoln, one Jolson, and one Marie Dressler."
***********
After seeing her that time in Washington, Lederer hired her, and when he produced the new Lillian Russell show Princess Nicotine on Broadway that fall, Marie Dressler had an important part and her salary was $50 a week.
A new chapter opened for her. Many things which had a great effect upon her life happened during the six years she was with Lederer.
First of all, she was brought into close touch with Lillian Russell. And the girl -- Marie was just past 20 -- knew her first real worship. The American Beauty was the first intimate friend she ever had. Beside Marie's bed to this day stands an exquisite photograph of Lillian Russell.
"She was as beautiful inside as she was out," Marie said. "Her nature was like sunshine. When she came on to the stage for rehearsals and tossed into my lap the great bunch of violets which she always wore, I was in heaven.
"From her, I first learned what graciousness meant, what courtesy meant, how kindliness could glorify everyday existence. From her I learned to keep my troubles and my corns and my toothaches to myself and just pass on the pleasant things. She was a great lady and she made me long to know people who were cultured and fine and gentle.
"The nearest I ever came to murder was while she was married to that **** Signor Perugini. On the stage one night, he said something to her that made me see red, and I was going to throw him into the bass drum. But Lillian wouldn't let me. I did chase him out of the theater with a stage brace, though."
The stage brace seems to have been a favorite weapon of Marie's. Later on she chased Jake Shubert out of his own theater with one.
It was during the Lederer engagement that she first met a pretty dark girl named Nella Webb, who was to be from that day to this her closest friend, and who, through her knowledge of astrology, was to have the greatest effect upon Marie Dressler's career of anyone she knew.
***********
And somewhere in those six years she was married. His name was Hopper, and he was a tall, handsome young man much sought after by women.
He had been cashier of the Atlantic Gardens in the Bowery, and when Lederer combined with Canary, their owner, he was made assistant treasurer of the new concern, Canary and Lederer.
"I sent him on the road with a show she was in," George Lederer told me, "and they got married. He's been dead a long time now. He was one of the handsomest men I ever saw. He and Marie were always rough-housing and having fun and laughing together. We used to see them at Martin's -- which was the smart place to go in those days -- and they were always cutting up like two kids.
"But I guess that was all there was to him, because it didn't last long. He wasn't up to Marie's caliber. But every woman's got to marry a big handsome man at least once, I guess."
After trying out a dozen actresses of bigger name and box-office draw, Lederer finally put Marie into the role of Flo of the Halls in a show brought over from England, called Lady Slavey.
"I didn't want her for it a bit," he said; "I wanted a big star name. But once she had rehearsed it for me, there was nothing to it but Dressler."
Lady Slavey ran almost two years in New York -- at that time a record -- and two more years on the road. Marie was able to accomplish her great dream. She brought her father and mother to New York and established them in a home on Long Island. She bought her mother a fur coat.
It had taken her more than 10 years to do it. But she had made good and life was very beautiful.
Thus, one day Marie Dressler's name was in electric lights. She was the star of the most successful New York and road show of the generation. And the next she was running a peanut stand in Coney Island!
***********
Here ends Part II of Adela Rogers St. Johns's life story of Marie Dressler. We'll take it up again next week with more of Marie's stage successes and her first venture into the movies. As always, your additions and comments are welcome.
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Tuesday's question: What was the name of the pet dachshund owned by Baron von Geiger (John Barrymore) in the 1932 film GRAND HOTEL?
Good luck!
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Good guess, feaito! You are correct!
In the 1951 movie THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, the alien Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) moved among us humans as Mr. Carpenter.
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Monday's question: What classic sci-fi movie features an alien named Mr. Carpenter?
Good luck!
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Good afternoon, everybody! Just a reminder that I'll be posting part 2 of The Private Life of Marie Dressler sometime late today or early tomorrow in this folder.
While I was going through this particular issue of Liberty (May 20, 1933), I couldn't help but read part 1 of a two-part story by Grace Perkins entitled Mike ("A Vivid Story of a Radio Star's Romance"). By the time I finished the first page, I realized that the story was the basis for the film TORCH SINGER with Claudette Colbert, David Manners, and Ricardo Cortez, released by Paramount later in the year! My gosh, they turned them out fast in those days!
But for now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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Sorry folks, couldn't log in to save my life this morning -- but here goes:
Friday's question: Who was director James Whale's original choice for the lead in his 1933 picture THE INVISIBLE MAN?
Good luck!
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Thursday's question: What Oscar recipient holds the record for most people thanked in an acceptance speech?
Good luck!
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Feaito scores on this one! William Faulkner's first Hollywood assignment was writing additional dialogue for John Ford's FLESH (1932).
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Thanks, bracken -- I had forgotten about that. I think THE RETURN OF THE KING may be tied with TITANIC and BEN HUR as far as Oscar wins are concerned, but I don't think it broke the record.
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I had just seen her as Belle Dee "from over the mountain" in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER before I heard this. What a smouldering, sexy performance! She was so good in CAT PEOPLE amd especially CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, too.
She burned so brightly for such a short time -- I'm going to miss her. Rest easy, lovely lady.
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Didn't know this was down here -- I answered it earlier without knowing it! TITANIC (1997) and BEN HUR (1959) share the record with 11 Oscar wins each, out of 14 nominations for TITANIC, and 12 nominations for BEN HUR.
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TITANIC (1997) and ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) share the record, with 14 nominations each. Of those, TITANIC won 11 -- tying with BEN HUR (1959) for most Oscar wins -- and ALL ABOUT EVE won six.
Now tell Nicole to put on her little black dress . . .
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Wednesday's question: What famous American novelist's first Hollywood assignment was contributing additional dialogue to a John Ford picture? (Uncredited, of course.)
Good luck!
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I cannot tell a lie, feaito -- you are correct!
Of all these actors, Alan Mowbray was the champ at portraying George Washington on film, playing our first President in the films ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1931), THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT (1932), and WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? (1945).
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Tuesday's question: What historical figure was portrayed on film by Francis X. Bushman, Arthur Dewey, Montagu Love, Richard Gaines, and Alan Mowbray, to name just a few?
Good luck!
PS: After several false starts, I have now posted the first installment of The Private Life of Marie Dressler elsewhere in this folder. Check it out, and let me know what you think -- there's more coming!
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You got it, feaito! Before Cary Grant starred with Irene Dunne in the 1937 version of THE AWFUL TRUTH, Arthur Richman's famous play had previously been filmed as a silent picture in 1925 with Warner Baxter and Agnes Ayres, and again as a talkie in 1929 with Henry Daniell and Ina Claire.
Alas, both earlier versions are lost!
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For all us trivia fans, and everybody who loves Marie Dressler, I'm presenting Adela Rogers St. Johns's four-part biography The Private Life of Marie Dressler in this space, specially edited for the TCM message boards. I'll be presenting one installment each week with my own bridging comments (in italics) to streamline and update this series from its original 1933 publication date. Feel free to post your own updates or comments, too. Let's commence . . .
PART ONE -- THE UGLY DUCKLING (Liberty, May 13, 1933)
At 50, anyone in the world would have told you that Marie Dressler was through, finished, washed up. Nothing ahead of her but an occasional part given from friendship or pity.
On the stage at 13, to earn a living for her family.
A Broadway favorite when she was 20.
Coney Island peanut vendor at 30.
The greatest of stage comediennes, cheered and feted on every hand, before she was 40.
At 50, the woman who had swept the country selling Liberty Bonds, led the chorus girls up Fifth Avenue in an Equity parade, made one of the first sensationally successful moving pictures, had been swept into the discard by the world's mad passion for youth.
Had her story ended there, Marie Dressler would be today a forgotten woman, remembered only when some orchestra revived "Heaven Will Protect The Working Girl" or some photograph told history of bygone days in the theater.
Had it been anybody but Marie Dressler, that is what would have happened.
Marie Dressler never in her life knew when she was licked. The Fates laid wager after wager that they could daunt her, and each time she took the challenge and went forward. Therefore, instead of accepting the verdict of the vast majority and of her own broken heart, Marie Dressler went to Hollywood.
Upon an afternoon just before Christmas of 1932, an open car slid through the heavy New York traffic. A red light blazed. The car halted. Almost instantly, it was surrounded by a mob of people, their tired faces alight with love.
From the park to Washington Square that open car drew throngs, and always upon their faces was that same look of eager delight. Within that car sat a great and famous woman.
That tribute, unparalleled as far as I know in the case of a private citizen out for an airing, was offered to a lined, dynamic, fearless, ugly and beautiful, ever-young tender face upon which was written the of 61 years of life.
Eleven years after they tagged her "finished," Marie Dressler was receiving the homage of her vast public. Today she is more beloved than any other woman in the world.
Perhaps the world doesn't know why. Perhaps she doesn't. But no actress can arouse in the breasts of the people in such an age of ours a devotion which manifests itself in the desire of old and young, rich and poor, great and lowly, merely to touch her hand. Marie Dressler is not just a movie star.
At 61, at a time of life when most women consider their work done, Marie Dressler is the greatest box-office attraction in the entire motion-picture industry. She is the close and respected friend of the great and powerful. She lives in a stately house. She earns a magnificent salary. She is the honored guest of those who opentheir doorsonly to what is fine. She has a social position such as no other stage woman has ever achieved.
She is loved because she has lived, loved, suffered, sacrificed, fallen, fought, and won. Because she once sold peanuts at Coney Island rather than lower her flag in a managerial battle. Because she once spenther last dollar for a gay potted geranium to help her through days when she couldn't get a job -- and then gave the darned thing to an elevator boy to take home to his sick mother. Because she has strolled in Italian gardens with ambassadors, and been the friend of kings and cardinals, but has known what it was to be sued for debt and to work her fingers to the bone to pay back the last penny.
By what struggles, through what trials and triumphs, did this woman rise to greatness?
*****************
On a cold November day, in a small house upon the outskirts of the little Canadian town of Cobourg, a second daughter was born to Alexander Koerber and his wife Anne. Her initial entrance received no applause, because the country doctor and the father were too busy trying to save the frail life of the mother. It was only after hours of effort that was finally triumphant that tehy had time to notice the lusty infant and select the name Leila.
Leila Koerber, who was to become famous as Marie Dressler, was born on November 9, 1871. She had one sister, May, then five years old.
(Note: Marie Dressler's birth year given here is 1871, the same date engraved on her tombstone. Other sources say 1868 or 1869, and an early issue of Theatre Magazine I've seen says 1863. For the sake of context -- and convenience -- I'll leave her birth year here and elsewhere as 1871.)
"You will find," Marie Dressler said to me one day, "that it is seldom that both parents in a family measure up. Usually one is fine and the other is a washout.
"In my family, my mother was a saint. A greater woman, in my opinion, than any I have known since. I never did like my father, and that's all there is to it."
Alexander Koerber was a German musician. He had served in the German army and had fought with distinction for the British. He was an autocratic, domineering man, but he was also cultured and profoundly artistic. Marie may not have like him, but from him she inherited her artistic temperament, which was later to become famous along Broadway, and her grande dame manner which once made here a part of New York's Four Hundred and has frequently discommoded Hollywood.
It is probable that he was connected with the Austrian aristocracy. Marie remembers words and incidents which indicated that he had forsaken a higher place in the world and severed all connections with the old country. Wherever he came from, Alexander Koerber hated Canada and he hated his life as a music teacher. He was a pianist and violinist of more than ordinary talent. There were nights, in whatever small town was their temporary home, when small Leila Koerber sat silent before the fire, holding her mother's hand and listening while inspired music flooded the room with majesty.
Upon those nights was born her passionate love of music -- a love which was never to leave her.
Her mother, Anne Henderson, was the daughter of an English-Irishman who owned trading stores, sailing ships, and a racing stable. She had been delicately reared and highly educated accrding to the standard of her times. Although her father had not approved of her marriage, it was expected that she would be an heiress. Her father did in fact leave her a fleet of merchant ships. But during a terrible gale, when all had been put into the docks, a fire broke out and they were destroyed, and with them Anne Koerber's hopes of doing anything for her small girls.
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She was a tiny thing, Marie's adored mother, with a small heart-shaped face and the merriest laugh that ever tinkled above the chord of adversity. She had dancing feet and dancing eyes, and dance they would, no matter what befell.
"My mother was my first audience," Marie told me once. "When I was a kid around the house, and I knew things were tough for her, I used to try to make her laugh. Usually, I could. No laughter I have ever won since, from Broadway openings or movie audiences, has ever been quite so precious to me.
"It was in those days that I learned the healing power of laughter. Troubles can never sem so big, life can nver seem so dark, when once you have laughed."
During the first 13 years of Leila's life the family moved endlessly from one town to another. She never saw a big city and she had practically no consistent schooling. Cobourg and Lindsay, Ontario, Saginaw and Bay City, Michigan, and Findlay, Ohio were some of the places where they set up housekeeping for brief periods until Alexander Koerber would antagonize all his pupils and most of his neighbors. "Then mother would get a letter from the rector and we would move on," said Marie.
Always Anne Koerber left friends behind.
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"My mother had a great sense of the dramatic, a real genius for stagecraft," Marie told me. "I realize that now. Never have I seen anything lovelier than the living pictures she used to arrange for church socials. She loved the theater with a real passion and she could do anything."
But, of course, in the Koerber family there was neither money nor opportunity for the real theater. So Anne Koerber created a substitute for herself.
In every small town she persuaded the people to give benefits, she arranged church entertainments to raise money for the poor. She cajoled her husband, for whom she usually procured the position of church organist, to write songs or orchestra. She herself was stage manager, author, leading lady, costumer, and carpenter. Always she used her won small daughters in the cast.
Marie's first stage appearance took place in one of these affairs, in Lindsay, Canada, at the age of five. She posed as Cupid, sans clothes but with bow and arrow. And fell off the pedestal, to the ruination of the living picture and the delight of the audience -- and as a portent, perhaps, of stage falls later on which were also to disprupt companies and send Broadway first-nighters into hysterics.
"Yes," said Marie reminiscently, "I got my first laugh with a fall. And I've been doing 'em ever since."
There are, unfortunately, no pictures of Marie in her original role as Cupid.
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Alexander Koerber was never a success. Even when he worked, he barely kept a roof over their heads. And there were times when he grew bitter and rebellious and would not work at all. It was for that, rather than for his severity, that his younger daughter began to look upon him with something very close to hatred. For when he put down the burden, it was her mother who was obliged to pick it up.
To Leila, to the sensitive, hot loyal, emotional child heart, one fact began to swamp the horizon. Her frail little mother was slaving to support the family.
They still laughed together, she and her mother. They romped in the fields, when a few moments could be spared, like two children. Yet one picture began to dance constantly before Leila's eyes -- the picture of her mother bent above stove, sewing machine, washtub.
When she was 13, Leila could stand it no longer. It was hopeless to expect anything of her father, who sat brooding at the world's rottenness and playing Beethoven.
"I must do it," said Leila Koerber aloud in the darkness. "I must take care of mother and May. I am old enough and strong enough."
The next morning she started to look for a job. She found it behind the counter of a department store.
"Comedy," says Marie, "has a great place in life. but you must know when and where to use it. I didn't mean to be funny, but comedy cost me my first job. Still, it's repaid me a good many times since."
For a day and a half, she stood behind that counter, undergoing her first -- but by no means her last -- experience of stage fright. In fact, stage fright began to be her nemesis right there. For in consequence she wrapped up a pair of gentlemen's flannel drawers for Miss Jennie Thistlewaite, the town's primmest old maid.
That ended, for the time being, her career as a saleswoman.
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Then a miracle happened -- and she knew.
The brother of Emma Nevada, then famous prima donna, brought a small traveling musical show to a near-by town and the local papers carried his advertisements for actors and actresses.
Breathless with excitement and hope, Leila Koerber poured out her soul to him in a 20-page letter setting forth her many qualifications, her long amateur experience, and telling him baldly that she was 16.
"I was engaged by letter," says Marie. "It is probably just as well. If he had seen me he would probably have sent me straight home. That was my first break."
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There was one last bitter quarrel with her father. The house rocked to the tempest. Leila was as big as her father by that time. She faced him, chin thrust forward, lower lip protruding, brows down -- her famous "fighting face." That may have been the first time she wore it -- certainly it was not the last.
He realized it was hopeless and gave in. "But you'll never disgrace my name prancing around behind the footlights, a common actress!" he yelled.
"All right," she yelled back. "I'll change my name!"
In that moment Marie Dressler was born. At 14, she started out to conquer the world. She was heartbroken to leave her mother. But the spirit of adventure, the love of danger, the hunger for life filled her with joy and excitement.
What lay ahead of her, a young girl without money, position, connections, or friends? Without beauty or recognized talent?
Nobody, of course, had ever heard of Hollywood. The motion picture had not even been invented. But there, like some distant El Dorado, lay New York, Broadway. Would she ever reach it? And if she did, what awaited her?
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Here ends the first installment of The Private Life of Marie Dressler. And just like in the old days, you have to wait till next week for the next installment, which recounts her early stage triumphs, her first real success in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," her friendship with the great Lillian Russell and showman George Lederer, and as the old heralds used to say -- much, much more.
Again, your suggestions and comments are welcome in this thread as I prepare next week's installment.
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Monday's question: In what movie did Cary Grant tackle a role that had been played (on other occasions) by Henry Daniell and Warner Baxter?
Good luck!
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Good morning, everybody! Stay tuned for the first installment of Adela Rogers St. Johns's real-life serial The Private Life of Marie Dressler, which I'll be posting in a separate thread in this folder later today. Haven't edited a piece of this length since my newspaper days, and I'm still playing with the format a little bit. But stick around -- this is going to be good!
For now, on to this week's movie trivia . . .
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Friday's question: In what movie does Henry Daniell say "I understand we understand each other"?
Good luck!
Trivia -- Week of February 28, 2005
in Trivia
Posted
Hmm . . . not quite, folks. Saucy Mae was talking about Jean Harlow.