Marie Dressler was the most popular actress at the box office when she appeared in August 1933 "Tugboat Annie." The back-to-back top box office honors in 1932 and now 1933 were so impressive Time Magazine placed her on the cover of its August 7, 1933 issue.
Dressler's popularity was long in coming. After playing opposite Charlie Chaplin in 1914's "Tillie's Punctured Romance," her presence in film and stage was barely noticeable. The veteran actress, who first appeared on the stage in 1897 and in film ten years later, was so frustrated with the profession that she was considering working as a housekeeper on a Long Island estate. An old friend, screenwriter Frances Marion, contacted her to appear in a major role in 1927's 'The Callahans and the Murphy,' a part she felt the 59-year-old Dressler was a perfect fit. With glowing reviews, Dressler saw offers from Hollywood pour in, especially when they heard her forceful voice that was perfect for the emerging technology of sound. An Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930's "Min and Bill" solidified her Hollywood comeback.
But at the height of her career, Dressler was diagnosed with terminal cancer, a condition she wasn't told for several months. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who just signed her to a three-picture contract, was told by her doctors the prognosis was not good. Mayer took a personal interest to make sure the actress' health followed a strict regimen. He restricted her travel, even though she groused at missing a New York City charity event she was headlining. When Mayer arranged for an experimental cancer therapy, Dressler finally understood his concerns.
During the filming of "Tugboat Annie," she was limited to three hours a day on the set. For long shots of her, a stand-in took her place. MGM arranged for most of the movie, set in Seattle, to be filmed in and around the Hollywood area. Despite a couch sitting on the side of the set for her whenever there was a break in filming, Dressler, in her autobiography, mentioned the storm scenes were the most physically challenging she ever went through as an actor. "One coastwise sailor in the cast told me that in twenty years' experience aboard tramp steamers he had never encountered rougher seas than those manufactured in our studios," she wrote. "Able-bodied men were slapped down by waves the script described as mild. There was more than one arm in a sling, and at least one leg in a plaster cast before we got through."
Her character, Annie Brennan, was based on Thea Foss, the founder of a successful Seattle-based tugboat company whose semi-fictitious personality was featured in a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by Norman Raine. The film portrays Annie's struggles with an alcoholic husband, Terry (Wallace Beery), while sustaining her loving relationship with her son Alec (Robert Young). Alec's engagement to a competitor's daughter, Pat Severn (Maureen O'Sullivan), causes trouble down the road. Director Mervyn LeRoy took his film crew up to Seattle to film the exteriors, making "Tugboat Annie" the first Hollywood movie to be shot in Seattle. MGM rented out one of Foss Launch & Tug Company's tugboats and called it the "Narcissus." The real tugboat seen in the film, renamed the "Arthur Foss," today is docked next to the Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center.
With the marquee attraction of Dressler and Beery, "Tugboat Annie" made MGM a profit of over $1 million, the richest take for the studio that year. The movie was so popular there were two remakes, in 1940 with Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, and in 1945 with Ann Darwell. Meanwhile, Dressler was able to fulfill the three-picture deal with her final movie, November 1933's "Christopher Bean," which exists but has never been released for home or television viewing. A copy has reportedly been stored in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, N. Y. She died on July 28, 1934, from cancer, at age 65. Dressler is interred in the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
