Marie Dressler is no longer a household name. But during the 1930s, in cinemas across North America, this undeniably plain woman, weighing more than 200 pounds and carrying 60-odd years, was a bigger box-office draw than stars of the day such as Greta Garbo or Jean Harlow. Toronto journalist and editor Betty Lee has written a biography of Dressler that allows us to understand why.

Born in 1867, in Cobourg, Ontario, Dressler left home at 14 to tour small Ontario towns in vaudeville and (as is the way with Canadian talent) moved on to major acclaim in the U.S. Her transition to film had some success, but by the end of the First World War her career seemed over. In the late 1920s, however, she made a spectacular comeback.

The book opens with a huge birthday celebration that MGM threw for Dressler on her 64th birthday, a year before her death from cancer in 1934. All the big Hollywood names were there (more than a few Canadian-born) and the affair was hosted by L.B. Mayer himself. The party is revisited near the end of the book to reveal that, incredibly, Dressler had completed three films in the year before her death. They have made millions for MGM.

Lee brings Dressler to life as an ebullient, bombastic, outrageous, but lovable woman, full of contradictions. Darling of the masses, she was equally adored by the rich and powerful, with whom she loved to hobnob. The biography is competently written and includes a filmography, and an index (mostly people and places). Chapter notes at the end of the book deal with sources (mainly the unpublished memoirs of a close friend of Dressler’s, two ghost-written autobiographies and archival materials), controversies, and other points of interest. These brief commentaries are satisfyingly informative and self-contained. The unconfirmed is acknowledged: Did Dressler marry her long-time companion Jim Dalton? Did she have lesbian relationships? The contradictory information from different (and sometimes the same) sources is presented objectively.

This is the portrait of a larger-than-life woman of enormous energy who, besides an acting career, took on social activism, war work, and several entrepreneurial endeavours. The turn-of-the-century theatre and the early days of Hollywood make an interesting background.