Cobourg will celebrate the 158th birthday of one of its most famous former residents on Monday (November 9), honouring Academy Award-winning actor Marie Dressler with an afternoon of film and Canadian cinema history.
Marie Dressler Celebration Day runs from 1:30 to 4 p.m. in the Citizens’ Forum on the second floor of Victoria Hall at 55 King Street West in downtown Cobourg. Admission is free, with donations welcome.
The event will feature a short film about the Canadian Women in Film Museum, a talk by Canadian author and historian Paul Langan on his new book about Canadian actresses from the silent film era, and a screening of the 1932 film Prosperity starring Dressler, along with refreshments and prizes for those in attendance.
Born in Cobourg on November 9, 1868 as Leila Maria Koerber, Dressler rose from touring theatre and Broadway to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, earning the affectionate hometown nickname “Cobourg’s Sweetheart” and becoming known as “Queen Marie of Hollywood.”
Her birthplace at 212 King Street West is now home to the Canadian Women in Film Museum, where Dressler is celebrated alongside other pioneering Canadian women in the film industry.
Dressler left home as a teenager to pursue a career on stage, performing with travelling theatre companies before establishing herself on Broadway. Her stage success eventually took her into silent motion pictures, beginning with the 1914 comedy Tillie’s Punctured Romance, which also starred Charlie Chaplin.
VIDEO: “Min and Bill” trailer
After experiencing career setbacks during the 1920s, Dressler made a remarkable comeback with the arrival of talking pictures.
Her performance opposite Greta Garbo in Anna Christie in 1930 helped revive her career, followed later that year by the hit comedy-drama Min and Bill, in which she plays a dockside innkeeper trying to protect the innocence of her adopted daughter while loving and fighting with inn resident and boozy fisherman Bill (Wallace Beery).
Dressler won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Min at the fourth Academy Awards on November 10, 1931 — the day after her 63rd birthday. She received another Best Actress nomination the following year for Emma.
Dressler remained one of Hollywood’s most popular stars into the early 1930s, appearing in films including Tugboat Annie (reunited with Beery) and Dinner at Eight, before her death from cancer in 1934 at age 65.
Dressler’s life and career are now featured in a permanent exhibition at the Canadian Women in Film Museum, which describes her as an entertainment industry pioneer who also sold war bonds, supported actors’ rights, and lent her voice to the women’s suffrage movement.
Monday’s celebration will place Dressler within the broader story of Canadian women who helped establish the early film industry, with Langan’s 692-page book Crossing the Border: Canada’s Forgotten Actresses of the Silent Film Era profiling Dressler and 31 other actresses, including Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Margaret Bannerman, and Florence Lawrence. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
“It is amazing that so many Canadian women played a key role in early Hollywood,” Langan said in a media release. “Cobourg’s Marie Dressler was one of those women. I am grateful to the Canadian Women in Film Museum for having me speak.”
Cobourg has formally marked Dressler’s birthday as Marie Dressler Celebration Day for several years. In 2018, the town proclaimed November 9 as a celebration day as part of events marking the 150th anniversary of her birth, and similar proclamations and birthday events have continued since.
The Marie Dressler Foundation, which owns and operates the Canadian Women in Film Museum, also presents the annual Vintage Film Festival at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope, where classic movies are screened on the historic theatre’s big screen. The foundation first launched the festival in 1992.
