Marjorie Rambeau

Rambeau was born in San Francisco to Marcel and Lilian Garlinda (née Kindelberger) Rambeau. Her parents separated when she was a child. Her mother and she 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. In her youth, she was a Broadway leading lady, starring in plays such as the 1915 comedy Sadie Love. In 1921, Dorothy Parker 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 films with the Mutual company included Mary Moreland and The Greater Woman (1917). The films were not major successes, but did expose Rambeau to film audiences. By the time talkies came along, she was in her early 40s and began to take on character roles in films such as Min and Bill (1930), The Secret Six (1931) starring Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, Laughing Sinners (1931) with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, Grand Canary (1934) with Warner Baxter and Madge Evans, Palooka (1934) with Jimmy Durante, and Primrose Path (1940) with Ginger Rogers and Joel McCrea, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Rambeau played a supporting role in Min and Bill (1930) with Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. Tugboat Annie was a follow-up to Min and Bill, though it was not a sequel. Rambeau replaced Dressler after her death as Tugboat Annie in the sequel Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940), also starring Alan Hale Sr., Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan, and Chill Wills. Also in 1940, she had second billing under Wallace Beery (the co-star of the original Tugboat Annie) in 20 Mule Team; she also played an Italian mother in East of the River with John Garfield and Brenda Marshall. In 1943, she played a supporting role in In Old Oklahoma with John Wayne, Martha Scott, and Gabby Hayes. Her other films included second billing in Tobacco Road (1941) and Broadway (1942) starring George Raft and Pat O'Brien. In 1953, she was again nominated for an Oscar, this time for Torch Song. She appeared in A Man Called Peter with Richard Todd and Jean Peters in 1955. She appeared in a supporting role in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), a biographical film about the life of Lon Chaney Sr. starring James Cagney as Chaney, although she 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.