Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

Two True Louise She Takes Life Seriously! By Katherine Above, the beautiful Louise Dresser, once a toast of the musical comedy stage, and now one of the most earnest and talented character actresses in all Hollywood. To the right, Miss Dresser as The Goose Woman in the film of that name — a great role that made her famous SHE began her stage career as a light comedienne. As such, she achieved nation-wide fame. She came to Hollywood to retire, but was persuaded to join the film colony by Pauline Frederick. A year later came "The Goose Woman." She has been playing that same role ever since. She is forty-seven years old and is determined to be another "Goose Woman" and another "Mother Knows Best" before she stops. "I look at myself on the screen and I'm amazed," said Louise Dresser. "I think Til scream if I see that slovenly, dull, peasant woman flash before my eyes again. I've been playing that same role for years. I wish I were a Pollyanna sort of person who was always pleased with every role meted out to her. But I'm not, and I'm not happy unless I have good stories and good parts." LOUISE DRESSER has had tremendous success. She, like Marie Dressier, has achieved film stardom at an age when most women are content to fill their lives with petty household details. But she is restless and dissatisfied with her work unless she reaches the peak of perfection that looms above her. She is as eager as a young girl just choosing her career. She takes her work and her life with the deadly seriousness of a great artiste. You might think she'd be content to live in her gorgeous Beverly Hills home with her Persian cat and her French bull dog. But she isn't. There's too much to be done, too much to be accomplished. So she's going to New York. She's going to show the stage producers that she isn't the broad-hipped, sod den, weepy character she's been ever since he achieved her amazing brand of stardom. "I'm not really a Gloomy Gus," she said. "I'm quite a cheerful person, but I'm never happy when I'm not engrossed in my work and feel that I'm giving the best I have. "Jack" — that's Jack Gardner, her husband, the casting director at Fox — "says that I'm just like all actors. Well, if we weren't all alike we wouldn't be actors. He says that we are always dissatisfied with our performances. "T DON'T work to have peoplelook at me and JL say, 'Oh, isn't she a marvelous performer!' I work to satisfy myself. To do the things I know I can do. To touch, for a moment, something of beauty. "And, truly, I don't work for money. I'm hopelessly stupid about finance. LTnless I've got somebody watching me all the time it trickles through my fingers and I don't know where it's gone. Oh, it isn't the money that has kept me here. And it isn't the fame. It's the hope that some day, some time, I'll do the things I really want to do." Louise attended the opening of the Fox Theater in San Diego. When the players were introduced, she received the biggest hand of any of them. She stood for several tragic minutes, arms thrown back against the curt.iin. She told me later that it was one of the most exciting moments of her life. "I was thrilled at the touch of an audience again," she said. "It made me think that maybe I could go back on the stage and that they'd remember me. There is still a theater and I feel that if I could get away from Hollywood for awhile — I haven't been to New York for ten years — and do a good play, the sort of thing I used to do — bright, humorous comedy drama — I would get a new lease on life. And maybe the producers would forget that woman I've been on the screen." Louise Dresser is one of the most charming women in Hollywood. Her friends know her as a gay, laughing, happy person. It is only her work, which is, of course, her life, that she attacks with the earnestness of a novice. AT a moment when most people are thinking of settling down to ruminate on past glories, Louise feels as if she were just beginning. Her last words were: "You wait. Just wait. I'm going to do something as good as 'The Goose Woman' and 'Mother Knows Best' yet!" 34