Trivia

Dressler won the 4th Academy Award for Best Actress (for her very serious performance in the dramatic film Min and Bill (1930)) and received the statuette at the ceremony held on November 10, 1931, the day after her 63rd birthday.

Was named the top box-office star of 1933 by the Motion Picture Herald, based on an annual poll of exhibitors as to the drawing power of movie stars at the box-office conducted by Quigley Publications.

Reportedly suffered from stage fright throughout her career.

Of the first four Academy Awards for Best Actress, after Janet Gaynor, the following three consecutive winners were all Canadian-born Americans: Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and Dressler. No Canadian-born actress has won an Oscar as Best Actress since Dressler. Canadian-born New Zealand-reared Anna Paquin won the 1993 Best Supporting Actress Award, however, for The Piano (1993).

Always credited her good friend, screenwriter Frances Marion, with literally saving her life. After much time spent trying to find her, Marion contacted Dressler about a major role in The Callahans and the Murphys (1927). Dressler reportedly contemplated suicide but other sources state that, in fact, she was considering working as a housekeeper at a Long Island estate. The Callahans and the Murphys (1927) marked a personal and professional comeback for her. It brought her to MGM, where she would remain a major star until her death.

She is commemorated on a 2008 Canadian postage stamp, one of four stamps honoring the achievements of Canadians in Hollywood. The other stamps depict Norma Shearer, Chief Dan George, and Raymond Burr.

Dressler reportedly had one child, a daughter who died in infancy. No details exist.

Dressler left an estate worth $310,000, the bulk left to her older sister, Bonita. Dressler left her 1931 automobile and $35,000 in her will to her maid of twenty years, Mamie Cox, and $15,000 to Cox's husband Jerry, who had served as Dressler's butler for four years. The two used the funds to open the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Savannah, Georgia, in 1936, named after the nightclub in Los Angeles. Dressler left $3,000 to fellow film actress Claire Du Brey.

Lived with James Dalton from 1914 until his death

Dressler's father was Alexander Rudolph Koerber, a German-born former officer in the Crimean War. Her mother was Anna "Annie" Henderson. She had an elder sister, Bonita Louise Koerber (1864-1939) wed playwright Richard Ganthony, and lived in Richmond, Surrey, England. The family lived at 212 King Street West, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. The house is an historical site and museum.

According to most census sources and the document as to the history of the house, Dressler was born in 1868. Other sources have traditionally cited 1869. The year 1871 is given as her year of birth on her gravestone in in Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale, California).

She appears as a character in the musical play "In Hell with Harlow" by Paul L. Williams.

In 1919, during the Actors' Equity strike in New York City, the Chorus Equity Association was formed and voted Dressler its first president. Dressler was blacklisted by the theater production companies due to her strong stance. Dressler found it difficult to find work during the 1920s. She left New York for Hollywood in search of work in films.

The Canadian-based Marie Dressler Foundation, which includes Marie Dressler House, hosts an annual Vintage Film Festival.

In 1910, Dressler scored her greatest Broadway hit with "Tillie's Nightmare", which four years later served as the basis of her first motion picture, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914).

Profiled in book "Funny Ladies" by Stephen Silverman. (1999)

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 141-143. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

Trade paper articles in November 1933 stated that Dressler's next film would be "Mrs. Van Kleek", a South Seas story. The film was never made; already ailing, Dressler died the following year from cancer at the age of 65.

Marie Dressler was a veteran of vaudeville and silents before achieving stardom at 61 as the drunken Martha in Anna Christie.