Canadian actress, playwright and screenwriter Marie Dressler was BOTD in 1868. Born in Cobourg, Ontario, she grew up in poverty, leaving home at 14 to join a travelling theatre troupe. After a long career in stock companies and vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in 1892, and became a star in the 1896 musical comedy Lady Slavey. She scored her greatest Broadway triumph as the co-writer and star of the 1910 Tillie’s Nightmare. Four years later, it was adapted into Hollywood’s first feature-length silent comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, starring Dressler and a young Charlie Chaplin. Her career was paused during World War One, when she campaigned for Liberty Bonds and performed for American servicemen. After attempting to sue the film’s producers for a share of the profits and her pro-union activities during the Actors’ Equity strike of 1919, she became unemployable on Broadway and in Hollywood, leading her to declare bankruptcy. She made an unexpected comeback in talking pictures, with vivid supporting roles in The Girl Said No, Let Us Be Gay and opposite Greta Garbo in Anna Christie. Signed to a contract with MGM, she became Hollywood’s top box-office attraction, winning an Oscar for the melodrama Min and Bill and making a splash in comedy Tugboat Annie, both co-starring Wallace Beery, and co-starring in George Cukor‘s comedy Dinner at Eight. In her later films, she conveyed an earthy realism that resonated with Depression-era audiences. Married twice, latterly to a bigamist who stole her money, her career successes were punctuated by financial failures and frequent periods of poverty. Discreetly lesbian, Dressler had a long-term relationship with her secretary Claire Du Brey, chronicled in Du Brey’s unpublished memoir. She died in 1934, aged 65.