Leila Marie Koerber (November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934), known professionally as Marie Dressler, was a Canadian-born stage and screen actress, script editor, writer, and comedian. She was popular in Hollywood in early silent and Depression-era film.
After leaving home at the age of 14, Dressler built a career on stage in traveling theatre troupes, and learned to appreciate her talent in making people laugh. In 1892, she started a career on Broadway that lasted into the 1920s, performing comedic roles that allowed her to improvise to get laughs. She soon transitioned into screen acting and made several shorts, but mostly worked in New York City on stage. During World War I, along with other celebrities, she helped sell Liberty bonds.
In 1914, she played the title role in the first full-length screen comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), opposite Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. In 1919, she helped organize the first union for stage-chorus players. Her career declined in the 1920s, and Dressler was reduced to living on her savings while sharing an apartment with a friend.
In 1927, she returned to films at the age of 58 and experienced a remarkable string of successes. For her performance in the comedy film Min and Bill (1930), Dressler won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She died of cancer in 1934, aged 65.
Dressler was born Leila Marie Koerber on November 9, 1868, in Cobourg, Ontario. She was one of the two daughters of Anna (née Henderson), a musician, and Alexander Rudolph Koerber (1826–1914), a German-born former officer in the Crimean War. Leila's elder sister, Bonita Louise Koerber (1864–1939), later married playwright Richard Ganthony.
Her father was a music teacher in Cobourg and the organist at St. Peter's Anglican Church, where as a child Marie would sing and assist in operating the organ. According to Dressler, the family regularly moved from community to community during her childhood. It has been suggested by Cobourg historian Andrew Hewson that Dressler attended a private school, but this is doubtful if Dressler's recollections of the family's genteel poverty are accurate.
The Koerber family eventually moved to the United States, where Alexander Koerber is known to have worked as a piano teacher in the late 1870s and early 1880s in Bay City and Saginaw (both in Michigan) as well as Findlay, Ohio. Her first known acting appearance, when she was five, was as Cupid in a church theatrical performance in Lindsay, Ontario. Residents of the towns where the Koerbers lived recalled Dressler acting in many amateur productions, and Leila often irritated her parents with those performances.
Dressler left home at the age of 14 to begin her acting career with the Nevada Stock Company, telling the company she was actually 18. The pay was either $6 or $8 per week, and Dressler sent half to her mother. At this time, Dressler adopted the name of an aunt as her stage name. According to Dressler, her father objected to her using the name of Koerber. The identity of the aunt was never confirmed, although Dressler denied that she adopted the name from a store awning. Dressler's sister Bonita, five years older, left home at about the same time. Bonita also worked in the opera company. The Nevada Stock Company was a travelling company that played mostly in the American Midwest. Dressler described the troupe as a "wonderful school in many ways. Often a bill was changed on an hour's notice or less. Every member of the cast had to be a quick study". Dressler made her professional debut as a chorus girl named Cigarette in the play Under Two Flags, a dramatization of life in the Foreign Legion.
She remained with the troupe for three years, while her sister left to marry playwright Richard Ganthony. The company eventually ended up in a small Michigan town without money or a booking. Dressler joined the Robert Grau Opera Company, which toured the Midwest, and she received an improvement in pay to $8 per week, although she claimed she never received any wages.
Dressler ended up in Philadelphia, where she joined the Starr Opera Company as a member of the chorus. A highlight with the Starr company was portraying Katisha in The Mikado when the regular actress was unable to go on, due to a sprained ankle, according to Dressler. She was also known to have played the role of Princess Flametta in an 1887 production in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She left the Starr company to return home to her parents in Saginaw. According to her, when the Bennett and Moulton Opera Company came to town, she was chosen from the church choir by the company's manager and asked to join the company. Dressler remained with the company for three years, again on the road, playing roles of light opera.
She later particularly recalled specially the role of Barbara in The Black Hussars, which she especially liked, in which she would hit a baseball into the stands. Dressler remained with the company until 1891, gradually increasing in popularity. She moved to Chicago and was cast in productions of Little Robinson Crusoe and The Tar and the Tartar. After the touring production of The Tar and the Tartar came to a close, she moved to New York City.
In 1892, Dressler made her debut on Broadway at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Waldemar, the Robber of the Rhine, which only lasted five weeks. She had hoped to become an operatic diva or tragedienne, but the writer of Waldemar, Maurice Barrymore, convinced her to accept that her best success was in comedy roles. Years later, she appeared in motion pictures with his sons, Lionel and John, and became good friends with his daughter, actress Ethel Barrymore. In 1893, she was cast as the Duchess in Princess Nicotine, where she met and befriended Lillian Russell.
Dressler now made $50 per week, with which she supported her parents. She moved on into roles in 1492 Up to Date, Girofle-Girofla, and A Stag Party, or A Hero in Spite of Himself After A Stag Party flopped, she joined the touring Camille D'Arville Company on a tour of the Midwest in Madeleine, or The Magic Kiss, as Mary Doodle, a role giving her a chance to clown.
In 1896, Dressler landed her first starring role as Flo in George Lederer's production of The Lady Slavey at the Casino Theatre on Broadway, co-starring British dancer Dan Daly. It was a great success, playing for two years at the Casino. Dressler became known for her hilarious facial expressions, seriocomic reactions, and double takes. With her large, strong body, she could improvise routines in which she would carry Daly, to the delight of the audience.
Dressler's success enabled her to purchase a home for her parents on Long Island. The Lady Slavey success turned sour when she quit the production while it toured in Colorado. The Erlanger syndicate blocked her from appearing on Broadway, and she chose to work with the Rich and Harris touring company. Dressler returned to Broadway in Hotel Topsy Turvy and The Man in the Moon.
She formed her own theatre troupe in 1900, which performed George V. Hobart's Miss Prinnt in cities of the northeastern U.S. The production was a failure, and Dressler was forced to declare bankruptcy. In 1901 she starred as Anna of Austria, Queen of Spain in the Broadway musical comedy The King's Carnival.
In 1904, she signed a three-year, $50,000 contract with the Weber and Fields Music Hall management, performing lead roles in Higgledy-Piggledy and Twiddle Twaddle. After her contract expired she performed vaudeville in New York, Boston, and other cities. Dressler was known for her full-figured body, and buxom contemporaries included her friends Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, May Irwin and Trixie Friganza. Dressler herself was 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall and weighed 200 pounds (91 kg).
In 1907, she met James Henry "Jim" Dalton. The two moved to London, where Dressler performed at the Palace Theatre of Varieties for $1500 per week. After that, she planned to mount a show herself in the West End. In 1909, with members of the Weber organization, she staged a modified production of Higgeldy Piggeldy at the Aldwych Theatre, renaming the production Philopoena after her own role. It was a failure, closing after one week. She lost $40,000 on the production, a debt she eventually repaid in 1930. She and Dalton returned to New York. Dressler declared bankruptcy for a second time.