Marie Dressler

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Marie Dressler (1909)

Marie Dressler (born November 9, 1868 in Cobourg , Ontario , † July 28, 1934 in Santa Barbara , California ; actually Leila Marie Koerber ) was a Canadian actress who began her career in the theater and became famous primarily as a comedy actress. In the early talkies time Dressler became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. In 1931 Dressler was awarded the Oscar for best leading actress for her appearance in The Foreign Mother .

Life

Dressler was born in the Canadian province of Ontario as the daughter of the German officer and music teacher Alexander Rudolph Körber, who was born in Lindow , Brandenburg in 1826 and later emigrated. She began her theater career at the age of 14 and first appeared on Broadway in 1892 . Dressler established himself as a vaudeville star in the following years . In 1914 she first appeared in the comedy film Tillie's Troubled Romance alongside Charlie Chaplin . In the years that followed, she made several Tillie comedies and became a popular comedian. After serving as a union leader during a stage workers' strike, she was blacklisted and suffered great financial hardship for years.

Her good friend, the screenwriter Frances Marion , took care of her over the years and, from 1927, got her a contract with the MGM studio . At first Dressler was employed as a resolute elderly lady, happily as a landlady. With the actress Polly Moran she appeared together in many strips and formed a popular screen couple . Her first successes in The Patsy and The Uncrowned Queen made her known again. However, she had her breakthrough to film star in 1930, when she took on the role of a bitter, old prostitute in Greta Garbo's sound film debut Anna Christie . In the same year she turned The Stranger Mother alongside Wallace Beery , who was a good 20 years younger than her, but played her husband in the film. The Strange Mother was one of the financially most successful films of the year. After this success, Dressler and Beery's footprints were left on the cement forecourt in front of the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood with the inscription "America's New Sweethearts, Min and Bill" . Dressler then only played in prestige productions and became one of the most popular actresses in the USA. For the years 1932 and 1933, she led the Motion Picture Herald Box Office Ranking , which was based on annual representative surveys by the Motion Picture Herald magazine among US cinema operators, as the country's biggest box office star.

At the Academy Awards in 1931 , Dressler was awarded the Oscar for best leading actress . For Emma the Pearl she received another nomination in this category at the 1932 Academy Awards . On August 7, 1933, she was on the cover of TIME magazine . In the same year she starred in a star cast alongside John Barrymore , Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery in Dinner at eight , the film adaptation of a successful Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber . The same year she reunited with Wallace Beery, Tugboat Annie became one of the studio's top hits of the year. In early 1934 she was diagnosed with fatal cancer. Shortly before her death, Louis B. Mayer gave her a new, financially lucrative contract to support her morale. She was married to George Hoeppert from 1900 to 1906 and had one daughter.

A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1559 Vine Street has been commemorating the actress since 1960 .

Awards

Oscar / Best Actress

Filmography (selection)

Movies with a superscript * indicate appearances with Polly Moran.

literature

  • Portrait: Marie Dressler: The serious comedian. In: Paul Werner , Uta van Steen: Rebel in Hollywood. 13 portraits of obstinacy. Tende, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1986, ISBN 3-88633-061-3 , pp. 75-90.

Web links

Commons : Marie Dressler  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Rudolph Koerber (1826-abt. 1908) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree. Retrieved March 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Star Walk
personal data
SURNAME Dressler, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koerber, Leila Marie (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian actress
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Cobourg
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1934
Place of death Santa Barbara (California)