REDUCING (1931)

In 1930, after years of professional purgatory (and worse), comic battleaxe Marie Dressler reemerged complete with her scene stealing support on Greta Garbo’s Talkie debut in Eugene O’Neill’s ANNA CHRISTIE, followed by a largely dramatic Oscar®-winner, MIN AND BILL.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/min-and-bill-1930.html)  Careworn, built like a long-retired fullback, glamor-free, she immediately became Hollywood’s top star till her death in 1934.  REDUCING, one of three bread-and-butter slapsticks she made with Polly Moran, a lesser talent who’d revert to minor support post-Dressler, the duo precursors to Lucille Ball & Vivian Vance or THE HONEYMOONERS’ Audrey Meadows/Joyce Randolph.  (The later, much like Dressler at her best, tinged with tragic undertones.)  In this one, Moran runs a busy NYC beauty salon/reducing spa and invites impoverished older sister Dressler (and family) to move from MidWest to Manhattan.  Shenanigans at the store and competition between Moran’s engaged daughter & Marie’s girl has Charles Reisner megging at a reasonable pace for 1931 M-G-M.  Yet the film only comes fully to life in the prologue and third act when Moran is off screen and Dressler can get down to business.  While hardly an actress in any traditional sense, not even a personality actress, Dressler had a genius for audience empathy, turning on emotional responses from a crowd as easily (and abruptly) as you might turn on a light switch.  And watch her work her own flesh (others’ too!) to get her point across thru physical contact.  Her own private ‘Delsarte Method’ of acting, picked up off the Vaudeville stage.* 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Fanny Brice, no doubt, learned this technique in much the same way and can be seen doing similar fleshly pawing in her few film appearances.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  More of this pair in PROSPERITY/’32.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/prosperity-1932.html