Monday Is Marie Dressler Day On TCM

In honor of her birthday on Monday (November 9, 2009), Turner Classic Movies is showing Marie Dressler movies from 6 in the morning until 8 at night. They include her Oscar-winning turn in Min and Bill, her Oscar-nominated performance in Emma and Tillie's Punctured Romance from way back in 1914. Directed by comedy legend Mack Sennett, Tillie's Punctured Romance marks a couple of significant firsts—it was the first feature-length comedy ever produced and after years on the Broadway stage, was Marie Dressler's first Hollywood movie.

It may also have been the first performance by a very young Milton Berle in the role of a newsboy who gets slapped. Anyway, he said it was, but no one remembered him—he was only six years old—and no studio records exist to confirm his claim.

Tillie also marked a significant last: other than cameos, it was the last time Charles Chaplin appeared in a movie he didn't direct.

You might also check out The Patsy to see Marion Davies in her prime. Remem- bered now as William Randolph Hearst's mistress, skewered unmercifully in Citizen Kane as the no-talent "singer" Susan Alexander, Davies was actually a deft comic actress (I really recommend you track down Show People as well).

There are a lot of other name acts here as well—Mabel Normand, Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny (in his first movie), Rudy Vallee, William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy, Marjorie Rambeau.

Why, there's even Lillian Gish in a comedy.

Nothing but the best for Marie Dressler who was the biggest star in Hollywood during the Early Sound Era. Check it out.

Here's the schedule from TCM's website (as always times are Eastern Standard Time):

6:00am [Silent] Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
In this silent film, a con man dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Charles Bennett Dir: Mack Sennett BW-72 mins

7:15am [Silent] Patsy, The (1928)
In this silent film, a romantic young woman falls for her sister's fiancé, then discovers her sister is cheating on him.
Cast: Marion Davies, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler, Dell Henderson Dir: King Vidor BW-77 mins

8:45am [Musical] Chasing Rainbows (1929)
Musical performers fall in love while rehearsing for the big show.
Cast: Bessie Love, Charles King, Jack Benny, George K. Arthur Dir: Charles F. Reisner BW-86 mins

10:15am [Romance] Divine Lady, The (1929)
Lady Hamilton's love affair with Admiral Nelson rocks the British Empire.
Cast: Corinne Griffith, Victor Varconi, H. B. Warner, Ian Keith Dir: Frank Lloyd BW-99 mins

12:00pm [Musical] Vagabond Lover, The (1929)
A small-town boy finds fame and romance when he joins a dance band.
Cast: Rudy Vallee, Sally Blane, Marie Dressler, Charles Sellon Dir: Marshall Neilan BW-65 mins

1:15pm [Romance] Girl Said No, The (1930)
A college sports star surprises everyone with his money-making schemes.
Cast: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler Dir: Sam Wood BW-92 mins

3:00pm [Drama] Min And Bill (1930)
Two crusty waterfront characters try to protect their daughter from a terrible secret.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau Dir: George Hill BW-66 mins

4:15pm [Comedy] One Romantic Night (1930)
A princess engaged to a prince falls for her brother's tutor.
Cast: Lillian Gish, Rod La Rocque, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler Dir: Paul L. Stein BW-72 mins

5:30pm [Drama] Politics (1931)
Two women take on small-town racketeers.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Rosco Ates, Karen Morley Dir: Charles F. Riesner BW-73 mins

6:45pm [Drama] Emma (1932)
A housekeeper faces unexpected snobbery when she marries her boss.
Cast: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy Dir: Clarence Brown BW-72 mins

See Jean Hersholt's Katie Award Winning Performance Tonight On TCM

Before you go to bed tonight, be sure to set your recorders to tape Ernst Lubitsch's bittersweet comedy, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, which is showing at 2 a.m., Wednesday, June 24, 2009, on Turner Classic Movies.

For those of you with long memories, Jean Hersholt won the first Katie Award for best supporting actor playing Ramon Novarro's kindly tutor.

From the TCM website:

2:00am [Silent] Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The (1927)

In this silent film, a young prince attending college falls for a barmaid below his station. Cast: Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, Jean Hersholt, Gustav von Seyffertitz Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-106 mins, TV-G

Best Supporting Actor Of 1927-28: Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

Before his name became synonymous with humanitarian causes, Jean Hersholt was also a fine character actor and never better than he was here in The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, one of the last silent films directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch.

Old Heidelberg, as the movie was originally known, is the story of a young prince (Ramon Novarro, who played the title character in the silent classic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ) who is torn from his family to prepare to take the reins of government from his uncle, the king.

It proves to be a lonely life and Hersholt, who plays the prince's tutor, Dr, Jüttner, is the only real friend and father the prince has ever known. While everyone in the palace is always telling the boy what he should do, the tutor is the only one who ever encourages him to do what he wants to do, and what little fun there is to be had for a prince growing up in a gated palace, the tutor provides.

Admittedly, Jüttner is not much at teaching the young man what it means to be a prince—in a funny scene during the prince's university exams, we learn that not only does the prince not know his country's history, neither does Jüttner—but he's done a first rate job at teaching him what it means to be a human being, and let's face it, future kings get their diplomas whether they know anything or not.

After graduation, instead of getting the expected medal and a forced retirement, Jüttner accompanies the prince who is sent to Heidelberg for graduate studies—studies which focus primarily on beer and a romance with Norma Shearer. The few months in Heidelberg are the best the prince has ever known.

Incidentally, this is one of Shearer's most appealing performances in a career that often leaves me cold. Here, she plays the niece of an innkeeper, the prettiest and most lively girl in Heidelberg, and the main attraction for the hoards of beer-swilling fraternity boys who crowd the inn's garden. Jüttner is delighted by her spunk, the prince by her beauty, as she shows them to their rooms in the tiny, third-rate inn and enthusiastically recommends the couch. "You can sit on it, you can lie down on it! You can't expect any more of a couch!"

She then proceeds, to the prince's embarrassment and the tutor's amusement, to demonstrate the virtues of the bed.

Love is in the air, but of course the tutor knows (and we suspect) that royal protocol will never allow the marriage of such a socially mismatched couple. And this ultimately is what The Student Prince is all about. The old tutor knows what the young prince doesn't, that you have to live as much as you can while you can because all things eventually end, and in one of the film's most poignant moments, Jüttner gently, but firmly steers the prince toward his inevitable duties as head of the government.

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg represented something of a turning point for Hersholt. Before this role, he had primarily played villains, and quite successfully, in classic silent films such as Tess of the Storm Country and Erich von Stroheim's Greed. His performance here was so effective, he afterwards became known for playing kind if weary wise men. His most remembered role may be that of the cantankerous yet caring grandfather searching for Shirley Temple in the 1937 version of Heidi.

Hersholt was twice awarded honorary Oscars, once in 1940 for his work in establishing the Motion Picture Relief Fund which was designed to help out-of-work and ailing actors, and again in 1950 after his years of service as president of the Academy. Shortly before his death in 1956, the Academy created the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award which is bestowed periodically on those from the Hollywood community who have significantly furthered humanitarian causes.

Note: I very seriously considered giving the first supporting actor award to Gary Cooper for his performance in Wings. He's only on screen for three minutes, he doesn't talk (of course), exits stage left and gets killed immediately. Given the way I usually feel about Gary Cooper's acting, I would normally say the only way his performance in Wings could be any better is if he wasn't in the movie at all. But the fact is, he's terrific—cocky but human, naturalistic and above all riveting—and those three minutes made him a star.

It wouldn't have been the briefest performance ever nominated—that would be Hermione Baddeley who was on screen for all of two minutes thirty-two seconds in 1959's Room At The Top. And Beatrice Straight won for Network in a role that lasted only five minutes forty seconds, so short in fact that the first time I saw the movie I didn't realize she'd been on screen until she was already gone.

There have been two dozen actors who have received Oscar nominations for performances that clock in at fewer than ten minutes (three of them won). So I think I could have gotten away with selecting Gary Cooper. But in the end, it was Jean Hersholt's performance that moved me most.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards For 1927-28

PICTURE: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox)

ACTOR: Lon Chaney (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)

ACTRESS: Mary Pickford (My Best Girl)

DIRECTOR: F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Clara Bow (Wings)

SCREENPLAY: King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd)

SPECIAL AWARDS: The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin) (Best Picture-Comedy); Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer) (Best Actor-Comedy or Musical); Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd) (Best Actress-Drama); George Groves (The Jazz Singer) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Toot Toot Tootsie" (The Jazz Singer) (Best Song); Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) (Cinematography)

MUST-SEE MOVIES OF 1927-28: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans; The Man Who Laughs; The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg; The Circus; Wings; The Crowd; Laugh, Clown, Laugh

The most popular movie of 1927 was The Jazz Singer, which introduced synchronized sound to the movies at last. Audiences were thrilled not just to see Al Jolson singing but to hear him singing—and after plowing through dozens of silent movies in the past couple of weeks, I can't say I blame them. You forget how much information you process through your ears and how much pleasure you can get from a human voice—at least until you do without for a while.

Only one problem with The Jazz Singer: it's a terrible movie. Really. I mean, yeah, being able to put sound in a movie was a tremendous breakthrough and audiences ate it up with a spoon, but beyond it's importance now as a historical footnote, I can't recommend it.

As for everything else that was released between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928 (I'm following Oscar's convention of straddling the two years), the Academy actually did a pretty good job of distinguishing the wheat from the chaff even if the awards were largely parceled out as a result of insider politicking and studio manipulation.

Wings (Best Production) and Sunrise (Unique and Artistic Production) won the two best picture awards, Emil Jannings was a well-respected actor and won for The Way Of All Flesh and The Last Command (remember, the award in those days was handed out for a body of work rather than a specific picture), and best actress winner, Janet Gaynor, was the star of the best movie of the year, Sunrise.

There were two best director trophies that year, one for comedy, one for drama. Lewis Milestone, who would win another Oscar for directing the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, won for the former; Frank Borzage, another two time winner, won the latter.

All respectable choices. With the benefit of more than eighty years worth of hindsight, however, I think the Academy could have done better.

That's where the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards come in.

I've done away with the splitting of categories—one director instead of two, one best picture award instead of the unexplained and unexplainable Best Production and Unique and Artistic Production awards.

I'm also doing away with Academy's habit of spreading the award for writing across a wide variety of ever-changing categories, including best original screenplay, best adapted screenplay, motion picture story, story and screenplay, screenplay and even this year's award for "title writing." With the Katies, it's one award, Best Screenplay, regardless of whether it's based on another source, wholly original or, as is often the case, a thinly disguised rip-off of last year's popular movie.

As I did with the career achieve- ment awards for the Silent Era, I will explain my choices in a series of essays over the next couple of weeks.

I've also included here a list of what I think are the must-see movies of the year, and will include a must-see list for each year I hand out awards.

Finally, I have included choices for best supporting actor and actress even though the Academy did not create those categories until 1936. I felt I otherwise would have ended up ignoring too many performances worth recognition. Besides, it gave me another excuse to see even more movies—and what could be wrong with that?

Notes: I don't have an official Fun-Stupid movie pick for 1927-28, but two might fit the bill: Wings is overly long for a silent movie and a bit corny but it also has at least an hour's worth of some of the best stunt flying and aerial dogfights ever filmed; and Charlie Chaplin's The Circus features a lot of physical comedy and acrobatic stunts and is readily available.