VETERAN SCREEN ACTRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

VETERAN SCREEN ACTRESS.

MISS MARIE DRESSLER'S RISEDRAMATIC AND COMIC ROLES. Marie Dressier, who upset all precedent in Hollywood by rising to stardom in her middle fifties instead of at twenty or twenty-one, is one of the few actresses in the film colony who have been equally successful in dramatic and comic characterisations. Frequently she has blended the two in a single role, as in the ill-starred Marthy of " Anna Christie," or the water-front house proprietress in " Min and Bill." At other times her screen roles have skirted the edge of straight farce, as in " Caught Short," " Reducing " and the forthcoming " Politics," in each of which she was paired with that complementary comedienne Polly Moran. Miss Dressier does not mind her considerable avoirdupois, looking upon it as a major asset in her cinema success. She is perhaps the most generally popular member of the Hollywood screen colony, and she considers dramatic parts (or roles in which the dramatic element is uppermost) easier to play than comedy characterisations.

" Comedy parts arc more exhausting," is lier verdict.. " Tliey arc more artificial and in the sense that laughs have to be very carefully measured and timed. Yet the public has the mistaken idea that it's sort of a let-down from hard work for a player to go through a comedy role. It's anything but that." . Juvenile actors and " old-timers " are likely to be the most sincere of all different types of players, in the opinion of Miss Dressier.

" There are only two stages of life at which people are completely natural and act and talk without restraint," she said. " These are the child period and the years past the half-century mark. Children haven't any inhibitions or false ideas and people over fifty are usually sensible enough to have dropped them—people engaged in professional work, anyway."