Leila Marie (Koerber) Dressler (1868 - 1934)

Born 9 Nov 1868 in Cobourg, Northumberland, Ontario, Canada

Ancestors

Wife of George Francis (Hopper) Hoppert — married 6 May 1894 (to 29 Oct 1896) in Greenville, Hudson, New Jersey, United States

Wife of James Henry Dalton — married about May 1904 in Monte-Carol, Monaco [uncertain]

Died 28 Jul 1934 at age 65 in Santa Barbara, California, United States

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Canada Project WikiTree [send private message] and Scott Fulkerson [send private message]

Marie (Koerber) Dressler is managed by the Canada Project. Join: Canada Project Discuss: canada

Biography

Marie (Koerber) Dressler is Notable.

Marie Dressler was a Canadian-American actor.

Birth and Childhood

Leila Marie Koerber was born 9 Nov 1868, in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, the younger of two daughters born to Alexander Rudolph Koerber and Anna Henderson.^[1] In 1871, at age two, she can be found residing with her parents and six-year-old sister, Bonita, at Belleville, Hastings West, Ontario, about 50 east of Cobourg. (Also residing with the family were a 30-year individual identified only as "Watterford" and an eight-year-old boy named John Burnham.) Her father was identified as German Lutheran,^[2] while her mother is identified in later records as having been born in Ontario, of Irish ancestry.^[3]

Leila's love of the theater began at an early age. Leila's parents were both musicians, and as a young girl she would help her father with the organ at St. Peter's Anglican Church, or perform in short theatrical productions put on by her mother for local community audiences. On one occasion, five-year old Leila, dressed as a cherub, was placed on a pedestal on the stage and warned not to move. When the curtain came up, it swept her off her feet to the riotous laughter of the audience. It was this early childhood incident that first taught Leila she could be funny, and that people would laugh at her antics.^[4]

As an older child, Leila's family was frequently on the move through Ontario and Michigan - from Cobourg to Toronto, to Lindsay, to Saginaw, to Bay City. In 1881, 12 year-old Leila was residing with her parents and older sister in Chatham, Ontario.^[5] As the family travelled from town to town, Leila constantly had to make new friends, and often turned to play-acting as a way of being accepted among her peers, further strengthening her desire to become a professional actor.

Theatrical Career

When Leila was fourteen, she wrote to the Nevada Travelling Stock Company requesting a job. She informed the company that she was an eighteen-year-old accomplished actress, and was hired without an audition. Leila's father is said to have strongly disapproved of her theatrical career and to avoid publicly embarrassing him, she adopted the name of an aunt as her stage name - Marie Dressler.^[6]

Marie traveled from town to town throughout the US with various theater companies until around 1891 when she arrived in Chicago, and from there went on to New York City. At first, she hoped to make a career of singing light opera, but then gravitated to vaudeville. Marie didn't have the classic skinny figure of a traditional actress and had always been sensitive about people laughing at her. It was playwright and director Maurice Barrymore who recommended that Marie pursue the comedic roles that would soon come to define her career. On 28 May 1892, she made her Broadway debut as Cunigone in Blythe's production of Waldemar, the Robber of the Rhine, at the Fifth Avenue Theater.

The show was unsuccessful and soon closed, but not before Marie had been discovered by George Lederer, a leading Broadway producer, who cast her as a supporting actress alongside the famed actress Lillian Russell, in Princess Nicotine, at the Casino Theatre. After a long successful run on Broadway, the show toured the country making Dressler well-known across America. In 1896, Lederer cast Marie in her first starring role as Flo in The Lady Slavey, also at the Casino Theatre. The show was a great success, playing for two years. Dressler became known for her hilarious facial expressions, seriocomic reactions, and double takes.

Transitional Years

On 6 May 1894, with her parents in attendance, 25-year-old Marie married 34-year old theatrical manager George Hoppert, at the home of Rev. Dr. Chapman, Episcopalian minister at the Grace Church in Greenville, New Jersey. At the time of her marriage, her address was listed as 184 Van Alst Ave., Long Island City.^[7] This marriage was short lived, which may have had something to do with the fact that, for several years, George had been living in a common law marriage with another woman - a former chorus girl who went by the name of Dora Hopper. On the morning after their wedding, Dora confronted the couple at the Casino Theater where they were working. She threatened to kill or disfigure Marie and to take George to court. Although this marriage did not last, it did result in Marie obtaining U.S. citizenship. There is also some evidence that the couple may have had a daughter who died as a small child, but this has not been confirmed.

In 1900, Marie was living on Bayside Blvd in Queens, New York, with her aging parents and an adult cousin named Annie Milchel. Also part of her household were an African-American cook named Lellie Langture, and a German stableman named William Brinkman.^[8]

That same year, Marie formed her own theater group, but its first production was a failure and Marie was forced to declare bankruptcy.^[9] She recovered briefly, but would declare bankruptcy again in 1909.

During this time, Marie met Jim Dalton, a businessman from Massachusetts who claimed he wanted to help with her career. The couple travelled to Europe and were married in Monte Carlo, in May 1904. Marie found little success in England, and eventually returned to America, where she continued to perform and tour. In 1909, Marie had a hit with the Broadway play Tillie's Nightmare, which many consider to have been the high point of her stage career.

During World War I, she worked tirelessly selling Liberty Bonds and entertaining the American Expeditionary Forces. During this period, she also starred in her first feature film, at the age of 44, opposite Charlie Chaplin in Mack Sennett's silent film Tillie's Punctured Romance, which was based on her stage hit Tillie's Nightmare. The film was a hit with audiences, and Marie appeared in two Tillie sequels and handful of other comedies until 1918, when she returned to vaudeville. In 1919, during the Actors' Equity strike in New York City, the Chorus Equity Association was formed and voted Marie its first president.

By 1921, Marie's husband Jim had become an invalid due to diabetes mellitus, and on 29 Nov 1921, while Marie was performing in St. Louis, Jim died at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. Marie left the tour and returned to Chicago, only to find that Jim's first wife, Lizzie Augusta Britt Dalton, had laid claim to his body and was returning him to New York to be buried in the family plot. Apparently, although Jim claimed to have divorced Lizzie in 1905, Lizzie had not consented to a divorce and had never been served divorce papers. The "minister" who had married Jim and Marie in Monte Carlo was actually a local man paid by Dalton to stage a fake wedding. Marie was devastated.

Following Jim's death, Dressler took an extended trip to Europe in 1923 and 1924, visiting England, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy. In 1924, she renewed her passport, describing herself as 5" 7" tall, with blue eyes, red hair, a fair complexion, a round face, a medium forehead, a small nose, a medium mouth, and a round chin. Her address was listed as 1730 Broadway in New York City, but she requested that her passport be mailed to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.^[10]

Upon her return to America, Marie found it difficult to find work. By this time she was in her mid-fifties in an industry that, even then, valued youth over experience. Having once earned $1,000 a week, she was now jobless and forced to live off of her savings. She moved to the Ritz Hotel in New York where an old friend, Albert Keller, the manager, let her a room at a very low rate. Eventually, she moved in with friend Nella Webb in an effort to save on expenses. She also accepted the position as hostess for the Ritz Supper Club, where she worked for the next several years.

Hollywood Career

In 1926, Marie made a final appearance on Broadway as part of an Old Timers' bill at the Palace Theatre, and was now contemplating a move to France to open up an American restaurant, when an old friend, director Alan Dwan, offered her a film role out of sympathy. Marie soon found herself under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and move to Los Angeles, where she rented a home on Hillside Avenue in Hollywood. Marie's first MGM feature was a rowdy silent comedy called The Callahans and the Murphys (1927). The film was initially a success, but the portrayal of Irish characters caused a protest by the American Irish Vigilance Committee outside the film's New York theatre. The film was ultimately pulled from release and was never shown again.

Marie Dressler won the 1931 Academy Award for Best Actress

Dressler went on to act in numerous comedic films which were popular with movie-goers and she eventually became Hollywood's number-one box-office attraction. In 1930, she appeared opposite Wallace Beery in a feature film called Min and Bill - a role that won her that year's Academy Award for Best Actress. She was nominated again for Best Actress for her 1932 starring role in Emma, but lost to Helen Hayes. In all, Marie appeared in more than 40 films, achieving her greatest successes in talking pictures during the final years of her life.

Later Years and Death

In 1929, Marie moved to Los Angeles to 6718 Milner Road in Whitley Heights, then to 623 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, both rentals. She moved to her final home at 801 North Alpine in Beverly Hills in 1932, a home which she bought from the estate of King C. Gillette. During her seven years in Hollywood, Dressler lived with her maid Mamie Steele Cox and later also with Mamie's husband Jerry who served as her butler.

In 1934, Marie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but according to legend, Louis B. Mayer found out the doctor's diagnosis before Marie, and ordered that she not be told in order to protect her. She passed away at age 65, 28 Jul 1934, in Santa Barbara, California. She was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California. She left an estate valued at $310,000, the majority of which went to her sister, Bonita.

Legacy

Marie's footprints are memorialized in cement, aside those of her Min and Bill costar, Wallace Beery, in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, with the inscription "America's New Sweethearts, Min and Bill."

Marie was the first woman ever to appear on the cover of Time Magazine, 7 Aug 1933.

The first of Marie's two autobiographies, The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling, was published in 1924; a second book, My Own Story (as told to Mildred Harrington), appeared a few months after her death

In 1960, Marie Dressler was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1731 Vine Street.

In 2008, Canada Post issued a postage stamp honoring Marie Dressler as part of its "Canada in Hollywood" series.

The Marie Dressler Foundation maintains the Canadian Women in Film Museum, which includes a room dedicated to her life and career, in the house she was born in in Cobourg, Ontario. It also established the annual Vintage Film Festival in 1992, which has screened most of her movies.

Sources

1. ↑ Garrick, Barbara. The Dressler Story: To Dream, To Dare, To Persist, To Win. (Cobourg, Ontario, Marie Dressler Foundation: 2014) citing Parish Records of St. Peter's Anglican Church, Cobourg. https://www.mariedressler.ca
2. ↑ 1871 Census of Canada. Ancestry.com (database online with images). Ontario, District 66 - Hastings West, Town of Belleville, page 58, dwelling 214, family 224, household of Louis Koerber (image 304)
3. ↑ 1871 Census of Canada. Ancestry.com (database online with images). Ontario, District 180 - Kent, Town of Chatham, page 43, dwelling 430, family 431, household of Alexander Koerber (image 169)
4. ↑ Garrick, Barbara. The Dressler Story: To Dream, To Dare, To Persist, To Win. (Cobourg, Ontario, Marie Dressler Foundation: 2014) https://www.mariedressler.ca
5. ↑ 1881 Census of Canada. Ancestry.com (database online with images). Ontario, District 180 - Kent, Town of Chatham, page 43, dwelling 430, family 431, household of Alexander Koerber (image 169)
6. ↑ "Famous Star Is Dead at 62". Montreal Gazette. July 30, 1934. pp. 1, 9. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
7. ↑ Episcopal Diocese of Newark (NJ) Church Records, 1809-1970. Ancestry.com (database online with images). Jersey City (Grenville), Grace Church, 1880-1896, citing marriage of George Frances Hoppert to Leila Marie Koerber (image 154).
8. ↑ 1900 US Federal Census. Ancestry.com (database with images). New York, Queens County, City of New York, Borough of Queens, Ward 3, ED 0659, sheet 10A, dwelling 189, family 200, household of Marie Dressler (image 19).
9. ↑ Lee, Betty. Marie Dressler: The Unlikeliest Star. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997).
10. ↑ "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV5Y-6LJR : accessed 22 September 2015), Marie Dalton A/K/A Dressler, 1924; citing Passport Application, New York, United States, source certificate #376010, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925, 2437, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,738,504.

• "Canada Census, 1871," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M4Q8-94F : accessed 18 September 2015), Lila Koerber in household of Louis Koerber, Belleville, West Hastings, Ontario, Canada; citing p. 59, line 10; Library and Archives Canada film number C-9991, Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 4,396,342.

• "Canada Census, 1881," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MVDR-4J4 : accessed 18 September 2015), Lillur Koerber in household of Alexander Koerber, Chatham (Town), Kent, Ontario, Canada; citing p. 93; Library and Archives Canada film number C-13280, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 1,375,916.

• "New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FZKB-55C : accessed 23 September 2015), George F. Hoppert and Leila M. Koerber, 06 May 1894; citing 495,718

• "United States Census, 1900," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MSLN-1D2 : accessed 18 September 2015), Marie Dressler, Borough of Queens, Election District 2 New York City Ward 3, Queens, New York, United States; citing sheet 315, family 201, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,241,148.

• "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV5Y-6LJR : accessed 22 September 2015), Marie Dalton A/K/A Dressler, 1924; citing Passport Application, New York, United States, source certificate #376010, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925, 2437, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,738,504.

• "Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1878-1939, 1955-1994," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N721-HMN : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dalton in entry for James Henry Dalton, 29 Nov 1921; citing , Cook, Illinois, United States, source reference cn 27934, record number 5, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,309,305.

• "Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NQ4C-97N : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dalton in entry for James Henry Dalton, 29 Nov 1921; Public Board of Health, Archives, Springfield; FHL microfilm 1,852,998.

• "New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KXMX-6X5 : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler, 1926; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,755,655.

• "New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/24XS-7BN : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler, 1928; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,756,066.

• "New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/24FV-RP8 : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler Or Dalton, 1930; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,756,501.

• "Hawaii, Honolulu Passenger Lists, 1900-1953," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV9Z-NXWN : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler, 1931; citing Ship , NARA microfilm publication A3422 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

• "California Death Index, 1905-1939," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QKSM-B5Q7 : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler, 28 Jul 1934; citing 40388, Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento.

• "Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QVJ1-BP3M : accessed 23 September 2015), Marie Dressler, 1934; Burial, Glendale, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale); citing record ID 300, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.

• Marie Dressler on Find A Grave: Memorial #300 retrieved 17:09, 7 October 2016 (EDT)
• Wikipedia:Marie_Dressler
• This WikiTree profile is referenced from Wikidata: Item Q253282, en:Wikipedia