Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler, born Leila Marie Koerber on November 9, 1868, in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, was a stage and screen actress, comedian, and writer whose career spanned Broadway, vaudeville, and Hollywood film. She died on July 28, 1934, of cancer. Her father, Alexander Rudolph Koerber, a German-born former Crimean War officer, worked as a music teacher and church organist in Cobourg, and her mother, Anna, née Henderson, was also a musician. Dressler's elder sister, Bonita Louise Koerber, later married playwright Richard Ganthony. The family relocated frequently during Dressler's childhood, eventually settling in various Midwestern American cities including Bay City and Saginaw, Michigan, and Findlay, Ohio, where Alexander Koerber taught piano. Dressler's first recorded performance came at age five, when she played Cupid in a church theatrical in Lindsay, Ontario.

At fourteen, Dressler left home to join the Nevada Stock Company, a traveling troupe that performed primarily across the American Midwest, telling the company she was eighteen. She adopted a stage name taken from an aunt, abandoning the Koerber surname at her father's objection. Her professional debut came in the role of Cigarette in Under Two Flags. She remained with the Nevada company for three years before moving on to the Robert Grau Opera Company and subsequently the Starr Opera Company in Philadelphia, where she stepped into the role of Katisha in The Mikado when the regular actress was unable to perform. She also played Princess Flametta in an 1887 production in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After returning home to Saginaw, she joined the Bennett and Moulton Opera Company, with which she toured for three years in light opera roles, including Barbara in The Black Hussars. By 1891 she had moved to Chicago, where she appeared in Little Robinson Crusoe and The Tar and the Tartar before relocating to New York City.

Dressler made her Broadway debut in 1892 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Waldemar, the Robber of the Rhine, a production that ran only five weeks. The show's writer, Maurice Barrymore, persuaded her to embrace comedy rather than pursue the operatic or tragic roles she had originally sought. She subsequently appeared in Princess Nicotine in 1893, where she befriended Lillian Russell, and took roles in 1492 Up to Date, Girofle-Girofla, and A Stag Party, or A Hero in Spite of Himself. Following the failure of A Stag Party, she toured the Midwest with the Camille D'Arville Company in Madeleine, or The Magic Kiss. In 1896, she landed her first starring role on Broadway as Flo in George Lederer's production of The Lady Slavey at the Casino Theatre, co-starring British dancer Dan Daly. The production ran for two years and established Dressler's reputation for physical comedy, including improvised routines in which she would carry Daly onstage. The success of The Lady Slavey allowed her to purchase a home on Long Island for her parents.

After a dispute led her to leave The Lady Slavey during its Colorado tour, the Erlanger syndicate blocked her from Broadway, and she worked with the Rich and Harris touring company before returning to Broadway in Hotel Topsy Turvy and The Man in the Moon. In 1900, she formed her own theatre troupe to perform George V. Hobart's Miss Prinnt in northeastern cities, but the venture failed and she was forced to declare bankruptcy. In 1901 she starred as Anna of Austria, Queen of Spain in the Broadway musical comedy The King's Carnival. Her Broadway career, which ran from 1897 to 1923, also included the revue Marie Dressler's All Star Gambol, Arms and the Girl, King Highball, and the musical Tillie's Nightmare, for which she also served as book writer.

In 1904, Dressler signed a three-year, $50,000 contract with the Weber and Fields Music Hall, performing lead roles in the musicals Higgledy-Piggledy and Twiddle Twaddle. After the contract expired she performed vaudeville in New York, Boston, and other cities. Standing five feet seven inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds, she was recognized alongside contemporaries Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, May Irwin, and Trixie Friganza. In 1907, she met James Henry Dalton, and the two moved to London, where she performed at the Palace Theatre of Varieties for $1,500 per week.

Dressler transitioned into film while continuing her stage work. In 1914, she played the title role in Tillie's Punctured Romance, the first full-length screen comedy, opposite Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. During World War I, she joined other celebrities in selling Liberty bonds. In 1919, she helped organize the first union for stage chorus players. Her career declined through the 1920s, and she lived on savings while sharing an apartment with a friend. In 1927, at the age of fifty-nine, she returned to film work and achieved a series of successes, culminating in the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the comedy Min and Bill in 1930. In her later years she also maintained friendships with Lionel, John, and Ethel Barrymore, the children of Maurice Barrymore, who had first redirected her toward comedy decades earlier.