Showing posts with label Marie Dressler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marie Dressler. Show all posts
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| Greta Garbo and Marie Dressler share a cocktail |
"If my old man don't help me, it's men again. Men all the time."
In this loose adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, the first film in which "Garbo Talks," coal barge captain Chris Christopherson (George F. Marion) is nervous because the daughter he hasn't seen in may years is coming to town. Chris' companion, Marthy (Marie Dressler), agrees to move off the barge to make way for Anna (Greta Garbo), who far from being innocent was employed as a prostitute after her cousins on the farm had their way with her. As father and daughter awkwardly try to mend fences, into their lives comes a sailor named Matt (Charles Bickford), who falls in love with Anna. But what will he think when he learns of the woman's past? Garbo's performance in her first talkie is a bit uneven, still influenced by the style of silents, but she does have some fine moments, such as when she delivers the poignant "I am my own boss" speech in which she tells of being misused by men throughout her life, and there's a beautifully played scene when Anna and Chris have their first meeting in the bar. Marie Dressler [The Patsy] almost walks off with the movie as Marthy, and has some especially splendid moments when she has a drink with Anna when the younger woman first arrives at the saloon. "You're me," Anna tells her, "forty years from now!" Charles Bickford [The Big Country] is a little broad but effective as Matt. The story is resolved much too neatly [except for poor Marthy] but the movie is well-done and well-acted for the most part. A German language version was made immediately afterward using the same sets but Garbo [Mata Hari] was the only cast carry-over. O'Neill's play was also the basis for the musical "New Girl in Town" decades later.
Verdict: Garbo Talks and More! ***.
This is another fine biography of the woman who became a top box office attraction even though she was old, fat and homely in a Hollywood full of young and pretty faces. The Unlikeliest Star records Dressler's triumphs and failures, her long stage career and in vaudeville, her silent and sound pictures, and her final days which combined pinnacles of success and Oscars with the terrible illness that eventually took her life. This book has more on the relationship between Dressler and her friend and companion, actress Claire Dubrey [actually Du Brey], as author Lee had access to the latter's unpublished manuscript on Dressler. If we're to take the ms. on face value, Dressler snatched away opportunities for Du Brey to continue to advance as an actress just so she could remain as her companion, and even objected when she wanted to go off and visit her sick mother [Dressler thought she was really going to see some man]. Whether this merely indicates the possessive, overbearing quality of the Celebrity towards one of her sycophants, or something deeper, is up to the reader to decide. After their split, Dressler worked on some of her most famous movies while Du Brey stayed in touch with the former's friends. Dressler's final days are well-documented. [Claire Du Brey actually had a long list of movie credits both before and after her period with Dressler, such as the Jones Family film Everybody's Baby.] NOTE: Mathew Kennedy also wrote an excellent tome on Dressler.
Verdict: Highly interesting account of the life and career of Marie Dressler. ***.
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| Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler |
Tillie (Marie Dressler) is a hard-working country girl who gets little love and lots of abuse from her father (Mack Swain), who is fond of booting her in the rear. Therefore she is easily duped by a stranger (Charlie Chaplin) into running off with him with her father's stash. Unfortunately for Tillie, the Stranger already has a much prettier girlfriend, Mabel (Mabel Normand), and the two of them run off with Tillie's money. Tillie gets a job as a waitress, but is arrested when she sees the couple and takes after them, but she's released when the cops learn she is the niece of a certain millionaire (Charles Bennett). Tillie's uncle is just as mean to her as her father, but when he falls off a mountain she becomes his heir, a fact that she doesn't know but the Stranger does ... Tillie's Punctured Romance is the film adaptation of Marie Dressler's hit Broadway show Tillie's Nightmare, and it was similarly well-received by the public. The three leads are fine, with Dressler getting the lion's share of the action and most of the laughs. Tillie is so put-upon that you almost can't blame her when she positively runs amok at the end of the picture, although Dressler isn't really given much opportunity to milk her role for pathos in this farcical comedy. She inherits her uncle's millions without benefit of inquest or probate! Some very amusing bits in this, and Dressler, while bordering on the vulgar at times, is ever-delightful [although it perhaps remained for the sound era to unveil her special genius]. This is probably the closest one can come to getting any sense of what Dressler was like in vaudeville and on the legitimate stage.
Verdict: Overlong but quite cute in spots. **1/2.
The wonderful Marie Dressler had a long stage career in everything from opera to vaudeville, and just when she felt she was unemployable and washed up, she embarked upon a Hollywood career that brought her even more fame and money, turning her in her sixties into a major box office attraction -- this despite her abject lack of youth and beauty. Along the way she had one marriage, one long relationship with a man she only thought she was married to, and a possibly romantic relationship with a younger actress with whom she broke up some years before her death. In Hollywood Dressler made a few comedy-dramas teaming her with Polly Moran, such as Reducing; won an Oscar for her work in Min and Bill; and appeared in the wonderful Dinner at Eight, wherein she has one especially classic sequence with Jean Harlow. Dressler kept working even when she was dying of cancer and other ailments [indeed she had an exhausting life]. Don't be fooled by the sub-title -- this is a major biography and not just a reference work -- although there is a ton of scrupulous research in the exhaustive tome. Not only has Kennedy managed to put together an excellent and rich biography of this very gifted and unusual lady -- despite the fact that most of her contemporaries are dead -- but his writing is never dry and academic but always lively and interesting. Highly recommended not just to Dressler fans but to anyone interested in the theater, films, moviemaking, and just good biographies. Kennedy also wrote a fine book on director Edmund Goulding.
Verdict: In a word, superb! ****.