Marjorie Rambeau
Encyclopedia
Marjorie Rambeau was an American film and stage actress.
to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska
where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and played the banjo in saloons and music halls. Her mother insisted she dress as a boy to thwart amorous attention from drunken grown men in such a wild and woolly outpost as Nome. She began performing on the stage at the age of 12. She attained theatrical experience in a rambling early life as a strolling player. Finally she made her Broadway debut on March 10, 1913 in a tryout of Willard Mack
's play Kick In.
leading lady. In 1921, Dorothy Parker
memorialized her in verse:
Her silent film
roles, all for the Mutual
company, were Mary Moreland
, The Dazzling Miss Davison, The Mirror, The Debt, Motherhood and The Greater Woman
(all in 1917). The films were not major successes but exposed Rambeau to a film audiences as opposed to Broadway and Vaudeville audiences. By the time talkies came along she was in her early forties and she began to take on character
roles in films such as Min and Bill
, The Secret Six
, Laughing Sinners
, Grand Canary
, Palooka
, and Primrose Path
, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
.
In 1940, Rambeau had the title role in Tugboat Annie Sails Again
as well as second billing under Wallace Beery
(the co-star of the original Tugboat Annie
) in 20 Mule Team
. Other films included Tobacco Road
, A Man Called Peter
, A View from Pompey's Head, Broadway
and Slander. In 1953, she was again nominated for an Oscar
, this time for Torch Song
. In 1957, she appeared in a supporting role in Man of a Thousand Faces
about the life of Lon Chaney
, though she had never worked with the real Chaney in silent films.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Rambeau has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6336 Hollywood Blvd.
According to author and New York Mirror
theatre critic Bernard Sobel
the Reuben sandwich
was invented for Marjorie Rambeau upon a visit to Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen
in New York City
.
Early life
Rambeau was born in San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
to Marcel Rambeau and Lilian Garlinda Kindelberger. Her parents split up when she was a girl. She and her mother went to Nome, Alaska
Nome, Alaska
Nome is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska, located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. According to the 2010 Census, the city population was 3,598. Nome was incorporated on April 9, 1901, and was once the...
where young Marjorie dressed as a boy, sang and played the banjo in saloons and music halls. Her mother insisted she dress as a boy to thwart amorous attention from drunken grown men in such a wild and woolly outpost as Nome. She began performing on the stage at the age of 12. She attained theatrical experience in a rambling early life as a strolling player. Finally she made her Broadway debut on March 10, 1913 in a tryout of Willard Mack
Willard Mack
Willard Mack was a Canadian-born actor, director, and playwright.Born Charles McLaughlin, in Morrisburg, Ontario, at an early age his family moved to Brooklyn, New York. After two years, they relocated to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where McLaughlin finished high school...
's play Kick In.
Career
In her youth she was a BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
leading lady. In 1921, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
memorialized her in verse:
If all the tears you shed so lavishly / Were gathered, as they left each brimming eye. / And were collected in a crystal sea, / The envious ocean would curl up and dry— / So awful in its mightiness, that lake, / So fathomless, that clear and salty deep. / For, oh, it seems your gentle heart must break, / To see you weep. ...
Her silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
roles, all for the Mutual
Mutual Film
Mutual Film Corporation was an early American motion picture conglomerate best remembered today as the producers of some of Charlie Chaplin's greatest comedies....
company, were Mary Moreland
Mary Moreland
Mary Moreland is a 1917 silent drama film starring stage actress Marjorie Rambeau and released through Mutual Film. A lost film-Cast:*Marjorie Rambeau - Mary Moreland*Robert Elliott - Thomas Maughm*Jean La Motte - Mrs. Daisy Maughm...
, The Dazzling Miss Davison, The Mirror, The Debt, Motherhood and The Greater Woman
The Greater Woman
The Greater Woman is a 1917 silent film drama starring Broadway actress Marjorie Rambeau in her first motion picture beginning a 40 year screen career. Mutual Film released the film and Frank Powell directed. A lost film.-Cast:...
(all in 1917). The films were not major successes but exposed Rambeau to a film audiences as opposed to Broadway and Vaudeville audiences. By the time talkies came along she was in her early forties and she began to take on character
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
roles in films such as Min and Bill
Min and Bill
Min and Bill is a 1930 American comedy-drama film starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery and based on Lorna Moon's novel Dark Star, adapted by Frances Marion and Marion Jackson....
, The Secret Six
The Secret Six
For the DC comic book see Secret Six .The Secret Six is a fast-paced 1931 Pre-Code crime film starring Wallace Beery as "Slaughterhouse Scorpio", a character very loosely based on Al Capone, and featuring Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau and Ralph Bellamy. ...
, Laughing Sinners
Laughing Sinners
Laughing Sinners Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable in a story about a cafe entertainer who experiences spiritual redemption. The dialogue by Martin Flavin was based upon the play, Torch Song by Kenyon Nicholson. The film was directed by Harry Beaumont...
, Grand Canary
Grand Canary (film)
Grand Canary is a 1934 Fox film of A. J. Cronin's novel of the same title. The film was produced by Jesse L. Lasky and directed by Irving Cummings.-Cast:*Warner Baxter as Dr. Harvey Leith*Madge Evans as Lady Mary Fielding...
, Palooka
Palooka (film)
Palooka is a 1934 comedy film directed by Benjamin Stoloff starring Jimmy Durante. It is based on the comic strip by Ham Fisher. The movie was adapted by Jack Jevne, Arthur Kober, Gertrude Purcell, Murray Roth and Ben Ryan from the comic strip...
, and Primrose Path
Primrose Path (film)
Primrose Path is a 1940 film about a young woman determined not to follow the profession of her mother and grandmother, prostitution. It stars Ginger Rogers and Joel McCrea. The film was based on the play of the same name by Robert L...
, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
.
In 1940, Rambeau had the title role in Tugboat Annie Sails Again
Tugboat Annie Sails Again
Tugboat Annie Sails Again was a 1940 sequel to the classic 1933 film Tugboat Annie. Marjorie Rambeau takes over the late Marie Dressler's role, and the supporting cast includes Alan Hale, Jane Wyman, and Ronald Reagan...
as well as second billing under Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
(the co-star of the original Tugboat Annie
Tugboat Annie
For the 1957 syndicated television series, see The Adventures of Tugboat Annie.Tugboat Annie is a 1933 movie starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery as a comically quarrelsome middle-aged couple who operate a tugboat...
) in 20 Mule Team
20 Mule Team (1940 film)
20 Mule Team is a 1940 American Western film about Death Valley, and Daggett, California borax miners starring Wallace Beery and Anne Baxter, and remains an extremely rare opportunity to watch Beery work with his similar-looking nephew Noah Beery, Jr., who played "Rocky" on television's The...
. Other films included Tobacco Road
Tobacco Road (film)
Tobacco Road is a 1941 film directed by John Ford starring Charley Grapewin, Marjorie Rambeau, Gene Tierney, William Tracy and Dana Andrews. It was based on the novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell, but the plot was rewritten for the film.-Cast:...
, A Man Called Peter
A Man Called Peter
A Man Called Peter is a 1955 American drama film directed by Henry Koster and starring Richard Todd. The film is based on the life of preacher Peter Marshall, who served as chaplain of the U.S. Senate late in his life, in an account written by his wife Catherine Marshall...
, A View from Pompey's Head, Broadway
Broadway (1942 film)
Broadway is a 1942 film about Broadway theatre with George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Janet Blair, Broderick Crawford, Marjorie Rambeau, Anne Gwynne, and S.Z. Sakall. Raft plays himself, recalling an incident early in his pre-movie career as a dancer. The movie was directed by William A....
and Slander. In 1953, she was again nominated for an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, this time for Torch Song
Torch Song (film)
Torch Song is a 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film starring Joan Crawford and Michael Wilding in a story about a Broadway star and her rehearsal pianist. The screenplay by John Michael Hayes and Jan Lustig was based upon the story "Why Should I Cry?" by I.A.R. Wylie...
. In 1957, she appeared in a supporting role in Man of a Thousand Faces
Man of a Thousand Faces
Man of a Thousand Faces is a film detailing the life of silent movie actor Lon Chaney, in which the title role is played by James Cagney.Directed by Joseph Pevney, the film's cast included Dorothy Malone, Jane Greer and Jim Backus...
about the life of Lon Chaney
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...
, though she had never worked with the real Chaney in silent films.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Rambeau has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6336 Hollywood Blvd.
According to author and New York Mirror
New York Mirror
The New-York Mirror was a weekly newspaper published in New York City from 1823 to 1842, and again as a daily newspaper renamed The Evening Mirror from 1844 to 1898.-History:...
theatre critic Bernard Sobel
Bernard Sobel
Bernard Sobel was an American playwright, a drama critic for the New York Mirror, an author of a number of books on theatre and theatre history, and a publicist. Among his clients were Florenz Ziegfeld, Charles Dillingham, A. L...
the Reuben sandwich
Reuben sandwich
The Reuben sandwich is a hot sandwich of layered meat, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese, with a dressing. These are grilled between slices of rye bread. The meat is either corned beef or pastrami, and the dressing is either Russian or Thousand Island dressing...
was invented for Marjorie Rambeau upon a visit to Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen
Reuben Restaurant
Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen was a landmark restaurant and deli in New York City.Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant, first opened the restaurant in 1908 at 802 Park Avenue. In 1916 it moved to Broadway and 73rd Street, and two years later it moved again, this time to 622 Madison Avenue...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Private life
Rambeau was married three times but bore no children:- The first was in 1913 to CanadianCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
writer, actor, and director Willard MackWillard MackWillard Mack was a Canadian-born actor, director, and playwright.Born Charles McLaughlin, in Morrisburg, Ontario, at an early age his family moved to Brooklyn, New York. After two years, they relocated to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where McLaughlin finished high school...
. They divorced in 1917.
- She then married another actor, Hugh Dillman, in 1919. They divorced in 1923. Dillman later married Anna Thompson DodgeAnna Thompson DodgeAnna Thompson Dodge was one of the richest women in the world at the time of her death.-Biography:She was born on August 7, 1871 in Dundee, Scotland as Anna Thompson. In 1896 she married Horace Elgin Dodge, Sr., of Dodge Brothers Company . The couple had a son, Horace Elgin Dodge, Jr., and a...
, widow of automobile magnate Horace Elgin Dodge, Sr., and one of the wealthiest women in the world.
- Rambeau's last marriage was to Francis Gudger in 1931, with whom she remained until his death in 1967. Gudger was from Asheville, North CarolinaAsheville, North CarolinaAsheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th largest city in North Carolina. The City is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center , which is the world's largest active...
. In the winters they often stayed there, and in the summer they lived in Sebring, FloridaSebring, FloridaSebring is a city in Highlands County, Florida, United States, nicknamed "The City on the Circle", in reference to Circle Drive, the center of the Sebring Downtown Historic District...
. His previous wife was killed in an automobile accident in Tampa two years before, but Rambeau and Gudger had been sweethearts years before when the former was the "toast of Broadway".
External links
- Marjorie Rambeau photo gallery at NYP Library (the man in the color photos with Marjorie is most likely her third husband Francis Gudger)
- Marjorie Rambeau papers at the University of Washington's Sayre collection
- theatrical portraits of Marjorie Rambeau, 1921 photo, ...1913 photo