Marie Dressler was the biggest female star of American movies in 1933. She wasn’t a sex symbol like Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich. Dressler was homely, overweight, in her 60s – and moviegoers adored her.
The public loved nothing better than to see their Marie play a drunk or a dowager and steal every scene from the glamour girls less than half her age. Dressler had been down and out for most of the 1920s. That she became a star at age 60 was an achievement that told Depression-battered audiences it was never too late.
