Marie Dressler: The Unlikeliest Star

Rating:
Summary: Insufficient research mars commendable effort
Review: The problem with this book becomes regrettably clear if one also reads Matthew Kennedy's biography of the wonderful Marie Dressler. Lee, despite her obvious effort, is not as assiduous a researcher as one would desire. Films she has not seen in fact exist for viewing; aspects of Dressler's personal life Lee implies are lost to history are in fact recoverable; Lee cannot ascertain what became of Dressler's faithful maid while Kennedy tracks her neatly to the end of her life; etc. Furthermore, Lee makes a welcome attempt to situate Dressler within theatrical history -- which was most of her career -- but appears to have essentially boned up on the subject before writing the book. Bringing turn-of-the-century theatre to life is challenging given that virtually all we have left are photographs, reviews, and sketchy comments, but people immersed in the subject by nature have accomplished this in varous books in a way that Lee cannot quite match. The main value of Lee's book is her access to the diary of Dressler's longtime companion and her thorough coverage of Dressler's battle with cancer. Otherwise, however, Kennedy's book is much more thorough and gives more of a sense of what made Dressler such a phenomenon.