Elated to have survived the last two weeks (and year), this blogger realizes that three of the most memorable and talented women to ever work in movies - Marie Dressler, Edna May Oliver and Hedy Lamarr - share November 9 birthdays.
The "password" for Marie remains her part in MGM's 1933 black comedy Dinner At Eight, directed by George Cukor.
Here, Marie delivers the greatest "take" in the history of motion pictures. No doubt Oliver Hardy and Charley Chase watched this moment of sheer comic genius in admiration.
Marie Dressler had an illustrious career that began back in the 1890's.
Matthew Kennedy's Marie Dressler biography elaborates further on her long career, which began in the 1890's.
Marie would be the top character actress in motion pictures in the first 5 years of talkies, hold her own with none other than the legendary Garbo in Anna Christie, win the Best Actress Oscar for Min & Bill, and be nominated for Emma.
A key collaborator of Marie’s was ace screenwriter Frances Marion, who had the magic touch over a four decade career. Frances Marion’s screenplays did wonders for Mary Pickford and other stars of silent pictures.
Having begun her movie career in the feature length Sennett knockabout-fest Tillie's Punctured Romance, she proved she could successfully transition from dramatic roles to broad physical comedy. Here she is, tearing it up with the very funny comedienne and mimic Marion Davies in The Patsy.
Marie tackled slapstick with panache, often with the star of pratfall-packed Mack Sennett and Fox Sunshine Comedies Polly Moran.
We were glued to TCM a few years back, when Marie Dressler was the Star of the Month.
One of the most prolific character actresses of the 1930's was Edna May Oliver, who began her career onstage and would become most ubiquitous in 1930's movies.
Performing everything from Dickens to Kalmar & Ruby, often brilliantly, Edna brought spunk and good humor to her roles, and, as was the case with Marie Dressler, could absolutely ace both comedic and dramatic parts. Love her in the the Wheeler & Woolsey comedies Half Shot At Sunrise, Cracked Nuts and Hold 'Em Jail.
With Bert & Bob, Edna appears to have relished doing comedy.
Edna received the ultimate tribute, to be caricatured in classic cartoons. Mickey's Polo Team, The Coo-coo Nut Grove, Porky's Road Race, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood and The Hardship Of Miles Standish are standouts.
Here's one of the Hollywood caricature cartoons seen the least, from the B-studio of B-studios, Screen Gems. Edna May Oliver is Mother Goose and enters at 1:29. Spoofing actors and actresses who were not caricatured in any another cartoons, Mother Goose In Swingtime rivals the Disney opus Mickey's Gala Premier and Tex Avery's WB masterpiece Hollywood Steps Out for sheer quantity (if not quality) of movie star caricatures.
One imagines that the Charles Mintz/Screen Gems studio did NOT have the desire or requisite dough-re-me to hire caricaturist extraordinaire and future UPA director T. Hee, responsible for outstanding character design work at Disney and Warner Brothers in those aforementioned Hollywood star-filled cartoons, to work on Mother Goose In Swingtime. Nonetheless, it's a very entertaining cartoon and the only one that features a caricature of Kay Francis!
The great Hedy Lamarr, a.k.a. Heddy Lamarr, while largely known for her beauty and amazing silver screen presence, could be described as a scientist who did modeling and movie acting on the side.
Unfortunately, Ms. Lamarr did not receive her due an inventor and innovator during her lifetime - although that recognition has come since her passing in 2000.
Partly because Hedy was nothing less than stunningly, breathtakingly gorgeous, her screen acting, IMHO, could be a tad underrated. While, given, she does not approach the character acting and comedy genius demonstrated by Marie Dressler and Edna May Oliver, let alone the rarified air and gravitas of a Bette Davis, Ms. Lamarr pulls off the following scene and others throughout the Bob Hope vehicle My Favorite Spy admirably and adeptly.
Richard Rhodes has penned a book about the life and accomplishments of Hedy Lamarr. Looks interesting!
Although the front covers of this still stresses Hedy Lamarr, babe, first, then Hedy the scientist, this looks like a good read.
For more info on the one, the only Hedy Lamarr, check out Anna Diamond's November 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article, Why Hedy Lamarr Was Hollywood’s Secret Weapon, as well as a superb post Trav S.D. penned for his Travalanche blog, Heddy Lamarr: The Scientific Circe. There's also Alexandra Dean's documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.
We finish by noting that prolific silent film comedian and "king of the extras" in talkies Snub Pollard was also born on this day - and that tomorrow, November 10, is the birthday of Mabel Normand, the top comedienne in silent pictures.
Mabel, dubbed "the female Chaplin," worked in short subjects and features, and was a director of her own starring vehicles at Mack Sennett's Fun Factory.
The first headliner of Sennett's Keystone Comedies, along with Ford Sterling and Fred Mace, "Madcap Mabel" preceded Charlie Chaplin as a movie star and appeared in 220 films.
More on the movie careers of Marie and Mabel can be found in Steve Massa's comprehensive and superb book on the numerous women of silent film comedy, Slapstick Divas, which devotes chapters to both silver screen icons.
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