Sybil Bruncheon's "THANKSGIVINGS PAST!"... and in Romania too!!....

Our immigrant friends have their own Thanksgiving traditions! Hello, Boys and Girls! Did you know that our nice friends from Romania are very glad to come to our country and learn about our history. They come from a mysterious place in Europe, and part of their country is named Transylvania and it's covered with mountains and castles and very dark forests. Do you like Halloween? I do too. And one of my favorite scary things about Halloween is Dracula... he's the vampire who flies about at night and bites people! (Maybe your little brother does that too and can even walk on the ceiling, but that's a different story for another time!)

Well, when our Romanian friends celebrate Thanksgiving, they cook all the nice dishes that you and I like... sort of... they like sweet potatoes, but they like them with garlic. They like green beans, but they like them with garlic. They like mince pie, but they like it with garlic!... as a matter of fact, they like garlic in everything... even in lime jello with carrot shavings... and a crucifix. But whatever they serve their friends, they always hang a dead bat on the wall. Where everyone can see! ...I guess that's to keep away mosquitoes!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!".... and tonight's mystery guest....

"Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen to WHAT'S MY SIDE DISH? Our celebrity panel will now try to figure out exactly what the next side dish is...and which relative had the nerve to bring it to your Thanksgiving table.. Let's start with Miss Kilgallen!"….

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!".... you want me to WHAT?.....

"God damn Macy's... I had no idea they wanted me to actually BE a float in the parade!!"....

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!"..... heel! HEEL!....

"Here Fritzi! I'll have the left-over Smirnoff's and YOU have the left-over olives!!... and don't throw up on the carpet again!"....     

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!".... and the first-runner-up is....

"Gee, Sally! I wish they'd made me Miss Turkey-In-The-Straw!...after all, I've had more ...um, experience!"..."

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!".... a new recipe...

"I got it. I got it!... I baste her every half hour, and turn her over again on the hour!"....

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Sybil Bruncheon's "THANKSGIVING IN OTHER LANDS!": Eastern Rumelia…

...You know, boys and girls, we Americans aren't the only people who are grateful for their history. Other countries have their OWN versions of Thanksgiving Day! For instance, in Eastern Rumelia, daddies go out into the woods on the second Wednesday of October every year and gather sticks and dried leaves from stickle-bushes and put them all over their clothes and in their hair ....and wear them for three whole days!!! They go off with all the other daddies from the villages and live in tree forts, or caves, or just lie in piles of wood and drink funny juices made from berries and then dance around bonfires. They like to sing songs very loudly, which sometimes turns into yelling. And they take sticks and decorate them with ribbons and doorknobs and hit each other over the head... or twirl them like batons and prance around pointing their toes and giggling. They play strange card games with dice and old socks, and take baths together when they finally get too itchy. They don't come back till their headaches have gone away...and they've stopped having upset tummies. ....Good little children and mommies aren't allowed to join in the merriment, and everyone gives thanks when it's all over! Now doesn't that Thanksgiving tradition sound like fun???

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Sybil Bruncheon's "OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE!!!.... Sober and somber....

Our Pilgrim forefathers were very sober and somber. There was no room for music, dancing, laughter, luxury, or even any sign of personal vanity. Indeed, the acknowledgement of "self" was strictly forbidden to the point where one's name was the only possession one actually "owned". People did not really even know their own ages since being born was absolutely no occasion for celebration...and birth dates were neither mentioned or remembered. Even calendars were considered unnecessary, decadent, a possibly an invention of the Devil. A prayerful soul observed the Sabbath Day every week...and nothing else, season after season. It was for that reason that historians have never been clear on one thing.... Did all Pilgrims die fairly young since the average lifespan in the 1600s was so short...or, did their life of total abstinence and self-denial keep them incredibly healthy and youthful? Fascinating to realize that this image could be of a husband and wife in their twilight years at 12 years of age...or conversely, at 86 years of age.... you decide. Whichever... they certainly look unhappy. And that's just as it should be. Hallelujah!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "WHO'Z DAT?"... MARIE DRESSLER (November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934)

Darlings! Mummy has made a decision! After reading dozens of posts and having hundreds of conversations with well-meaning folks who just don't know about the great CHARACTER actors who gave films the depth and genius that surrounded and supported the so-called "stars", I am going to post a regular, special entry called SYBIL'S "WHO'Z DAT?"....there'll be photos and a mini-bio, and the next time you see one of those familiar, fabulous faces that you just "can't quite place".......well, maybe these posts will help. Some of these actors worked more, had longer and broader careers, and ended up happier, more loved, and even wealthier than the "stars" that the public "worships". (I think there may be a metaphor in that! What do you think???). Well, while you’re thinking it over, step aside and make way for the true meaning of the Hollywood “battleship”…or “battle axe” ...whatever!

It’s MARIE DRESSLER (November 9th, 1868 – July 28th, 1934). Born Leila Marie Koerber in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada to parents Alexander Rudolph Koerber, who was Austrian and a former officer in the Crimean War, and Anna Henderson, a musician. Her father was a music teacher in Cobourg and the organist at St. Peter's Anglican Church, where as a child Marie would sing and assist in operating the organ. According to Dressler, the family regularly moved from community to community during her childhood, though this is unconfirmed. There is no information about her childhood education, either. It has been suggested by Cobourg historian Andrew Hewson that Dressler attended a private school, but this is doubtful if Dressler's recollections of the family living in poverty are correct. The Koerber family eventually moved to the United States, where Alexander Koerber is known to have worked as a piano teacher in the late 1870s and early 1880s in Bay City, Michigan, Findlay, Ohio, and Saginaw, Michigan. Her first known acting appearance was as Cupid at age five in a church theatrical performance. Residents of the towns the Koerbers lived in recalled Dressler acting in many amateur productions, and Leila often aggravated her parents with those performances. 

Dressler left home at fourteen to begin her acting career with the Nevada Stock Company, telling the company she was actually eighteen. The pay was either $6 a week, and Dressler sent half to her mother. It was at this time that Dressler adopted the name of an aunt as her stage name. According to Dressler, her father objected to her using the name of Koerber. The identity of the aunt was never confirmed, though Dressler denied that she adopted the name from a store awning. Dressler's sister Bonita, five years older, left home at about the same time. Bonita also worked in the opera company. The Nevada Stock Company was a traveling troupe that played mostly in the American Midwest. Dressler described the experience as a "wonderful school in many ways. Often a bill was changed on an hour's notice or less. Every member of the cast had to be a quick study.” Dressler made her professional debut as a chorus girl named Cigarette in the play UNDER TWO FLAGS, a dramatization of life in the Foreign Legion.

Dressler would remain with the troupe for three years, while her sister left to marry playwright Richard Ganthony. The company eventually ended up in a small Michigan town without money or a booking. Dressler joined the Robert Grau Opera Company, which also toured the midwest, and she received an improvement in pay to $8 per week, although Dressler claims she never received any wages. She ended up in Philadelphia, where she joined the Starr Opera Company as a member of the chorus. A highlight for her with the Starr company was portraying Katisha in THE MIKADO when the regular actress was unable to go on, due to a sprained ankle, according to Dressler. After the touring with different plays including one in which she was required to hit a baseball into the audience every night, she finally quit regional theatre and moved to New York City.

In 1892, she made her debut on Broadway at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in WALDEMAR, THE ROBBER OF THE RHINE which only lasted five weeks. Dressler had hoped to become an operatic diva or tragedienne, but the writer of WALDEMAR, Maurice Barrymore, convinced her to accept that her best chance of success was in comedy roles. Years later she would appear with his sons, Lionel and John in motion pictures and would also become good friends with his daughter Ethel. After years of more touring around the country and even to London, and a couple of bankruptcies involving her own productions and theatre companies, she settled once again in NYC. During World War I, along with the Barrymores she helped sell Liberty Bonds, and in the 1919 Actors’ Equity Strike she helped organize the first union for stage chorus players, which brought her into direct conflict with the big Broadway producers including George M. Cohan. From one of her successful Broadway roles, she played the titular role in the first full-length 6 reel screen comedy, 1914's TILLIE’S PUNCTURED ROMANCE opposite Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. She went on to make several shorts in the film studios on the East coast, but mostly worked in New York City on the Broadway stage. Her career declined somewhat in the 1920s and Dressler was reduced to living on her savings while sharing an apartment with a friend and even living in a servant’s room in the Hotel Ritz.

In 1927, she returned to films at the age of 59 and experienced a remarkable string of successes. Dressler had many ups and downs in her amazing career, although she finally appeared some forty films. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930–31 for MIN AND BILL opposite Wallace Beery and was named the top film star for 1932 and 1933. Her appearance in the classic DINNER AT EIGHT (1933) directed by George Cukor remains an iconic star-turn despite the incandescent performances of fellow super-stars John and Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke, and Wallace Beery.

Tragically, she would die of cancer in 1934 at the peek of her career. She was married twice but had no children, and was rumored to have had affairs with other actresses in Hollywood. Dressler was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Marie Dressler has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1731 Vine Street. After MIN AND BILL, Dressler and Beery added their footprints to the cement forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, with the inscription "America's New Sweethearts, Min and Bill.” For me, with her gruff delivery and heart of gold, Dressler will remain one of the greatest “sweethearts” that ever graced the silver screen. Along with her fellow Birthday-girl Edna May Oliver (November 9th, 1883), I could look at her forever!... For people who love films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Dressler remains yet another one of the Platinum performers that, once seen, can never be forgotten! She, like Edna May Oliver, is truly a perfect example of enduring power and talent in one who was never just "another pretty face". 

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Sybil Bruncheon's "WHO'Z DAT?"... EDNA MAY OLIVER (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942)

Darlings! Mummy has made a decision! After reading dozens of posts and having hundreds of conversations with well-meaning folks who just don't know about the great CHARACTER actors who gave films the depth and genius that surrounded and supported the so-called "stars", I am going to post a regular, special entry called SYBIL'S "WHO'Z DAT?"....there'll be photos and a mini-bio, and the next time you see one of those familiar, fabulous faces that you just "can't quite place".......well, maybe these posts will help. Some of these actors worked more, had longer and broader careers, and ended up happier, more loved, and even wealthier than the "stars" that the public "worships". (I think there may be a metaphor in that! What do you think???).

Will our next guest enter and sign in please….EDNA MAY OLIVER! (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) With a face that no one could forget, she appeared on stage and film as one of America’s best-known character actresses, often playing tart-tongued spinsters. Born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the sixth American president, John Quincy Adams. She quit school at age fourteen in order to pursue a career on stage and achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy OH, BOY!, playing the hero's comically dour Quaker Aunt Penelope. Oliver started out in silent films in 1923 but continued her stage work making her most notable stage appearance as Parthy, wife of Cap'n Andy Hawks, in the original 1927 stage production of the musical SHOW BOAT. She repeated the role in the 1932 Broadway revival, but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version of the show so that she could play the Nurse in that year's film version of ROMEO AND JULIET, her only role in a Shakespeare film or play.

While most often playing featured parts in over forty films, she starred in three popular mystery-comedies as spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers. Oliver received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1939 for her appearance in DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK. Since Oliver was cast in several film versions of classic British literature, including ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1933), A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935), DAVID COPPERFIELD (1935), the 1936 film version of ROMEO AND JULIET, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940), using a quite realistic upper-class English accent, many film-goers have incorrectly assumed that she was British.

When asked why she played predominantly comedic roles, she replied, "With a horse's face, what more can I play?" Oliver died on her 59th birthday in 1942 following a short intestinal ailment that proved terminal, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. For people who love films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Edna May Oliver remains yet another one of the Platinum performers that, once seen, can never be forgotten! She is truly a perfect example of enduring power and talent in one who was never just "another pretty face". 

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