Marie Dressler

Leila Marie Koerber, known to the world as Marie Dressler, was born on November 9, 1868, in Cobourg, Ontario, and died of cancer on July 28, 1934, at age 65. She worked as a stage and screen actress, script editor, writer, and comedian, finding popularity in Hollywood during the silent era and the Great Depression.

Dressler left home at 14 to join a traveling theatre troupe, telling them she was 18. She earned about $6 or $8 a week and sent half to her mother. She adopted her stage name from an aunt, though the aunt’s identity was never confirmed. Her father objected to her using the family name Koerber. Her older sister, Bonita, also left home around the same time to work in opera.

In 1892, Dressler debuted on Broadway at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in *Waldemar, the Robber of the Rhine*, which lasted only five weeks. She had hoped to be an opera singer or tragedienne, but the play’s writer, Maurice Barrymore, convinced her that comedy was her strength. She later became friends with his children, actors Lionel, John, and Ethel Barrymore. During her Broadway years, which stretched into the 1920s, she performed comedic roles that allowed her to improvise for laughs.

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 helped sell Liberty bonds alongside other celebrities. In 1919, she helped organize the first union for stage-chorus players.

Her career declined in the 1920s, and she lived on her savings while sharing an apartment with a friend. In 1927, at age 58, she returned to films and enjoyed a remarkable run of successes. For her role in the comedy *Min and Bill* (1930), she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Dressler was born to Anna Henderson, a musician, and Alexander Rudolph Koerber, a German-born former Crimean War officer who worked as a music teacher and church organist. As a child, she sang and helped operate the organ at St. Peter’s Anglican Church. The family moved often and lived in genteel poverty. They eventually settled in the United States, where her father taught piano in Michigan and Ohio. Dressler made her first acting appearance at age five, playing Cupid in a church production in Lindsay, Ontario. She often irritated her parents with her amateur performances.

After three years with the Nevada Stock Company, she joined the Robert Grau Opera Company, then the Starr Opera Company in Philadelphia. A highlight was stepping in as Katisha in *The Mikado* when the regular actress sprained her ankle. She later joined the Bennett and Moulton Opera Company for three years, playing light opera roles. She particularly remembered hitting a baseball into the stands while playing Barbara in *The Black Hussars*. By 1891, she had moved to Chicago, then to New York City.

On Broadway, she earned $50 a week, supporting her parents. She met and befriended Lillian Russell while playing the Duchess in *Princess Nicotine* (1893). Her Broadway credits included *1492 Up to Date*, *Girofle-Girofla*, and *A Stag Party, or A Hero in Spite of Himself*. After that last show flopped, she joined another company.