Marie Dressler

Canadian actress Marie Dressler receiving the Academy Award for Best Actress from her fellow Canadian actress Norma Shearer, who had received the Academy Award for Best Actress the previous year. This photograph was taken at the Academy Awards banquet in Los Angeles on the 10th of November in 1931.

Marie Dressler won this Oscar for Best Actress, in the title role of "Min", for the American Pre-Code comedy-drama film, directed and produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by George W. Hill, 'Min and Bill' (1930), co-starring Wallace Beery in the title role as "Bill". Adapted by Frances Marion and Marion Jackson from Lorna Moon's 1929 novel 'Dark Star', the film tells the story of dockside innkeeper Min's tribulations as she tries to protect the innocence of her adopted daughter, Nancy, (played by actress Dorothy Jordan) while loving and fighting with boozy fisherman Bill, who resides at the inn. The picture was a runaway hit.

The previous year, Norma Shearer won the Oscar for Best Actress in the role as "Jerry Martin" in the American Pre-Code drama film directed and produced for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Robert Z. Leonard, 'The Divorcée' (1930) that was adapted from the 1929 novel 'Ex-Wife' by Ursula Parrott. The film also features Chester Morris as "Ted Martin", Conrad Nagel as "Paul", Robert Montgomery as "Don", Judith Wood as "Dorothy" (sister of Mary), Helene Millard as "Mary" (sister of Dorothy), and Florence Eldridge (the actress wife of actor Fredric March) as "Helen Baldwin".

Marie Dressler (November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934) was a Canadian stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Pre-Code film star. Repeating one of her successful Broadway roles, she played the titular role in the very first full-length screen comedy ever made, 'Tillie's Punctured Romance' (1914), an American silent comedy film directed by the Canadian film maker Mack Sennett and his Los Angeles based studio 'The Keystone Film Company', which also featured Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, and the Keystone Kops. The picture was the only feature-length comedy made by the Keystone Film Company.

After Marie Dressler appeared in her Academy Award winning role in 'Min and Bill (1930), and during the last year of her life, she was celebrated for her performances in two very popular and critically acclaimed films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Marie Dressler appeared as "Carlotta Vance" in the American pre-Code comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor 'Dinner at Eight' (1933), which was adapted from George S. Kaufman's and Edna Ferber's 1932 play of the same title. The film had an all-star MGM studio players ensemble cast also including John Barrymore as "Larry Renault", Wallace Beery as "Dan Packard", Jean Harlow as "Kitty Packard", Dan's wife, Lionel Barrymore as "Oliver Jordan", Billie Burke as "Millicent Jordan", Oliver's wife, Lee Tracy as "Max Kane", Larry Renault's agent, Edmund Lowe as "Dr. Wayne Talbot", Madge Evans as "Paula Jordan", the Jordans' daughter, Jean Hersholt as "Jo Stengel", a theatrical producer, Karen Morley as "Lucy Talbot", Wayne Talbot's wife, Louise Closser Hale, as "Hattie Loomis", Millie's cousin, Phillips Holmes as "Ernest DeGraff", Paula Jordan's fiancé, and the Australian actress May Robson as "Mrs. Wendel", the Jordans' cook.

That year Marie Dressler was also celebrated for her role as "Annie Brennan" in the American Pre-Code film directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 'Tugboat Annie' (1933), in which she was paired once again with Wallace Beery, who played "Terry Brennan" They played a comically quarrelsome middle-aged couple who operate a tugboat. Dressler and Beery were MGM's most popular screen team at that time, having established that status when they appeared in the bittersweet 'Min and Bill' (1930) together.

Marie Dressler, at the height of her career, tragically died the next year, in 1934, on this date, the 28th of July. The house where Marie Dressler was born, in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, is now known as "Marie Dressler House" and is open to the public as a museum.