MARIE DRESSLER
[Illustration: MARIE DRESSLER.]
One cannot see Marie Dressler on the stage without being convinced that
she is acting no one in the world but herself. Such, I believe, is the
actual condition of affairs, although there are sometimes strange
paradoxes in theatrical life. It would not be altogether extraordinary
for the rollicking tomboy of the stage to be in private life the most
retired and the most dignified person imaginable, a woman with spinster
written all over her face and reeking in domesticity, with a decided
fondness for tea, toast, and tidies.
However, that is not the case with Marie Dressler. She has a mental
quirk that keeps the incongruous side of life in her view practically
all the time. She cannot help pricking constantly the bubble of mirth
any more than she can help breathing. Her humor is just the kind that
one would naturally expect to find as a companion to her overflowing
physique,--ponderous, weighty, and a bit crude, perhaps, but
spontaneous, real, and thoroughly good-natured. She never stabs with the
keen shaft of cynical wit, and she does no business in the epigram
market. Her specialty is incongruity, for Marie Dressler is a burlesquer
in thought, word, and deed, and being a burlesquer she is of necessity
absolutely without illusions. When one is so susceptible to the
oddities, the inconsistencies, and the tragic pettiness of human affairs
as she is, it is a toss-up whether or not his settled condition of mind,
after a fair experience with the world, be one of gloomy pessimism or
irresponsible optimism. Had Miss Dressler been by nature cold,
suspicious, and inherently selfish, had she been unsympathetic and
without the milk of human kindness, her instinct for incongruity would
surely have turned her toward misanthropy. Her disposition, however, was
rollicking, jovial, and fun-loving. She was naturally impulsive,
generous, and warm-hearted. Consequently, life, even in its smallnesses
and its meannesses, made her laugh. With the humorist's whimsical
temperament she united also the happy faculty of being able to
communicate to others by means of the theatre her comical view of
things. Choosing to do this through the force of her own personality
rather than by infusing her personality into a dramatist's conception,
she became a droll, a professional jester.
Miss Dressler's best-known and most characteristic work on the stage was
done in the role of the boisterous music-hall singer, Flo Honeydew, in
"The Lady Slavey." It was hardly a case of acting,--better call it a
case of letting herself go. Marie Dressler without subterfuge presented
herself in the guise of the unconventional Miss Honeydew. She seemed a
big, overgrown girl and a thoroughly mischievous romp with the agility
of a circus performer and the physical elasticity of a professional
contortionist.
To call her graceful would be an unpardonable accusation. Possibly she
might have been graceful had she chosen to be; but what she was after
principally was energy, and she got it,--whole car-loads of it. Her
comic resource was inexhaustible, her animal spirits were irrepressible,
and her audacity approached the sublime.
Yet, amid all her amazing unconventionality and her astonishing athletic
feats, one found, if he met her on her own plane of impersonal jollity,
neither vulgarity nor suggestiveness. Her mental attitude toward her
audience was absolutely clean and straightforward. She was not a woman
cutting up antics and indulging in unseemly pranks, but a royal good
fellow with an infinite variety of jest.
With nothing especially tangible to offer as evidence, I have a
suspicion that Marie Dressler, if she could escape from her reputation
as a burlesquer, might act a "straight" part not at all badly. It is
only a fine line between burlesque and legitimate acting, only a
triflingly different mental attitude, which results in travesty instead
of seriousness. Of course, the burlesque must be set forth with the
proper amount of exaggeration to give point to the take-off, but that is
only a matter of technique. Artificiality in actors and insincerity in
dramatists very often result in unconscious burlesque. The melodramatic
school is particularly prone to this most inartistic of blunders, and
many a good laugh has followed lines that were supposed to be charged
with the most highly colored sentiments and situations that were
intended to be dramatically strong and impressive. One at all familiar
with Miss Dressler's methods cannot have failed to notice her trick of
beginning a speech with profound and even convincing seriousness and
ending it in ridiculous contrast with a sudden drop from the dramatic to
the commonplace. In spite of the fact that one knows for a certainty
that she is fooling him, she succeeds invariably in making the first
part of her sentence seem honest and sincere.
Now, I do not believe that she could hit just the right key every time
in these startling and laughter-provoking contrasts, if she did not have
to an unusual extent the instinct for dramatic effect, which is so large
a part of the equipment of the legitimate actor. However, I hope that
she will never make the experiment. There are already enough serious
actors of ordinary calibre, while the genuine burlesquer of Marie
Dressler quality is rare indeed.
Miss Dressler's versatility as a single entertainer was splendidly
illustrated in a curious variety act, which was called "Twenty Minutes
in Shirt Waists." It was devised for the sole purpose of showing off to
the best advantage Miss Dressler's native talent for fun-making and
travesty. It was mere hodge-podge, of course, with neither rhyme nor
reason, but it did afford Miss Dressler every chance that she could
desire to display her marvellous resource as a comic entertainer. The
title of the sketch, "Twenty Minutes in Shirt Waists," suggested some
sort of a disrobing act, but in that it was deceptive. Indeed, the
title--and possibly it was all the better for that--had no connection at
all with the act beyond the fact that Miss Dressler and her assistant,
Adele Farrington, both wore shirt waists of spotless white. It was a
very intimate and unstagy affair. The two entertainers called each other
Marie and Adele, and they kept up the illusion of spontaneous
comradeship by appearing, or seeming to appear, in the Eleanora Duse
fashion, without facial make-up. The turn itself was a continuous
"jolly," and Miss Dressler introduced before it was over about
everything funny that she ever did in the theatre, including the amusing
revolving hat of "The Lady Slavey" fame.
Miss Dressler was born in Canada, and went on the stage when she was
sixteen years old; and in spite of the fact that she was without
experience,--in fact, before she had ever seen a comic opera,--she
rather inverted the ordinary method of procedure, and started at once to
play old women. Her first character was Katisha in "The Mikado" in a
company managed by Jules Grau. The reason, so she claims, that she made
a try at "old women" was because she was too big and healthy ever to
meet with success as a soubrette. Her Katisha was sufficiently liked to
convince her that light opera was just the place for her, and thus her
theatrical career began.
"I might state," remarked Miss Dressler, naively, in speaking of her
early experiences, "that we members of the Grau Company were promised
and were supposed to receive very good salaries. All we got, however,
was the promises, and they came early and often. No, that is not
altogether true: we got besides the promises twenty-five cents which was
handed to each member of the company every night. It was supposed to be
squandered in the purchase of beer. I forgot this little circumstance,
for I did not drink beer, and consequently in my case the aforesaid
quarter of a dollar was not forthcoming. This omission hurt me so much
that I resigned from this enterprising organization, and wandered to
Philadelphia. The exchequer was about as low as it well could be, and I
was glad enough to take a place in the chorus of a summer company at
eight dollars a week,--not a great deal, to be sure, but I got it, such
as it was."
Miss Dressler's next engagement was with the Bennett and Moulton Opera
Company, from which Della Fox was also graduated. This organization
played week stands in small cities and large towns, giving two
performances a day and changing the bill every day. This may be said to
have been Miss Dressler's school, for while under the Bennett and
Moulton management she appeared in thirty-eight different operas and
played every variety of part, from prima donna roles to old women.
Following this arduous experience on the road came her first appearance
in New York at the Fifth Avenue Theatre as Cunigonde in "The Robber of
the Rhine," an opera of which Maurice Barrymore, who wrote the book, and
Charles Puerner, who composed the music, never had reason to feel proud.
Her first New York success of any consequence, therefore, was not made
until she appeared with Camille D'Arville in "Madeleine, or the Magic
Kiss." Her next venture was as the Queen in "1492," the part which
brought fame to that most accomplished woman impersonator, Richard
Harlow. After the termination of this engagement she appeared for a time
at the Garden Theatre, New York, under the management of A. M. Palmer,
and then joined Lillian Russell in "Princess Nicotine." Her remarkable
success in "The Lady Slavey" came next, and since then she has been seen
in "Hotel Topsy Turvy," "The Man in the Moon," and vaudeville.