Marie Dressler: A Biography, with a Listing of Major Stage Performances, a Filmography and a Discography

by Matthew Kennedy

Early in the century, Marie Dressler was hailed as one of America's finest comics, with a 20-year string of Broadway and vaudeville successes including The Lady Slavey, Miss Prinnt, Higgledy Piggledy, The Man in the Moon, and Tillie's Nightmare. She starred with Charlie Chaplin in the first ever feature-length comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance and later in Min and Bill for which she won an Academy Award. A brilliant comedienne in body, timing, inflection and reactions, her talents far exceeded the expectations of slapstick, and her movies earned sums far greater than those of Garbo, or Harlow, or even Gable. This work examines Dressler's life from vaudeville to talkies. Based on extensive research and interviews with Dressler's surviving friends, co-stars and colleagues, including Maureen O'Sullivan, Jackie Cooper and Anita Page, it details her public and personal successes and failures. A listing of her stage appearances, vocal recordings and films is included.

269 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Matthew Kennedy is a writer, film historian, anthropologist, and host and curator of the CinemaLit Film Series at the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco. He is the author of three biographies of classic Hollywood: Marie Dressler: A Biography (McFarland, 1999, paperback 2006), Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), and Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, (Oxford University Press in 2014). He has contributed to various anthologies, including The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance & Musical Theater and of Film and Television (Cleis Press, 2004 and 2005). He is film and book critic for the respected Bright Lights Film Journal, and his articles have appeared in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Performing Arts, San Francisco Chronicle, program books for the TCM Classic Film Festival and San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and the National Film Registry. Kennedy is a former modern dancer, arts administrator, concert producer, and contracted writer for George Lucas Books. He taught film history and anthropology at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and City College of San Francisco from 1994 to 2017. He has been a guest speaker at a number of venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Mechanics Institute Library, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and on radio, podcasts, and television. His book Roadshow! was the basis of a film series on Turner Classic Movies. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship and a San Francisco Cable Car Media/Journalism Award. He holds a BA in theater arts from UCLA and an MA in anthropology from UC Davis, is a member of The Authors Guild, and is represented by Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists in New York.