Marie Dressler

Passions

Vocation

Notable

Traits

Canadian actress: Her debut in silent films was in Mack Sennett's first feature length movie, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" in 1914. The daughter of a music teacher, she joined a stock company at 14 and by the time she was 20 had become a seasoned veteran in light opera and stage. One of the nations leading comediennes, she remained essentially a vaudeville and musical comedy star until the enormous boost of prestige from her performance in "Anna Christie" in 1930. She won an Oscar as Best Actress in "Min and Bill" in 1931 and was nominated for Oscars in "A Ship Comes In," 1928 and for "Emma," 1932. Dressler was a homely woman with an enormous girth, very unlikely star material, but in the early ‘30s she was among Hollywood’s most popular personalities. Her autobiography was candidly titled, "The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling." Also, according to her biographer, Betty Lee, Dressler seems to have been bisexual or lesbian: "Certainly Dressler enjoyed, even preferred, the company of women --particularly after [Jim] Dalton's death -- and many of them were openly lesbian. The actress's intimate association with astrologer Nella Webb could easily be interpreted as a lover's alliance. So could her close-knit relationship with her personal secretary, Claire Dubrey." Biographers Donald Spoto and Charles Higham say there has never been any evidence that Dressler was known in the movie community as a lesbian, though they also admit that this sort of behavior was seldom the subject of gossip at the time. However, composer David Diamond, who spent many years in the Hollywood of the 1930s, insists that Dressler was known as an active lesbian and was friendly with other well known lesbian actresses such as Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly." (pp. 186-187) She died in 1934. Link to Wikipedia biography