Tugboat Annie

Tugboat Annie reunited Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler for a second time after the big hit they made with Min And Bill. Although that first film was more dramatic and Dressler got her Best Actress Award for Min And Bill, Tugboat Annie still has a lot of laughs and heart in it as Marie Dressler cares for her husband, child, and business which is running a salvage tug out of Puget Sound.

Marie of course is in the title role and she skippers the USS Narcissus and works in a man's world. She lives on the tug with her husband and child Frankie Darro who grows up to be Robert Young. Beery is her shiftless drunken husband, but she's determined to raise their son to make something of himself.

Flashing forward several years, Robert Young is now captain of an ocean liner and working for a former rival of Dressler's, Tammany Young who has worked his way up from the salvage business. Young is engaged to Tammany's daughter Maureen O'Sullivan, but he's not that crazy of his parents stepping into society, Marie doesn't fit and she knows it, and Beery is just Beery.

Who periodically goes off on a toot and always lets his family down. However in the end during a crisis on the Narcissus, Beery does come through. It's why she loves and puts up with him.

MGM put a little money into Tugboat Annie doing a whole lot of location shooting in Puget Sound. I don't know whether the cast got up there or their footage was done on the sound stage, but it certainly was blended in nicely with background shots.

In real life Beery and Dressler hardly got along, then again Wallace Beery got along with very few people in the world. Still their on screen chemistry is not to be denied in Tugboat Annie which holds up every bit as good for today.

Marie Dressler was the most popular actress at the box office when she appeared in August 1933 "Tugboat Annie." The back-to-back top box office honors in 1932 and now 1933 were so impressive Time Magazine placed her on the cover of its August 7, 1933 issue.

Dressler's popularity was long in coming. After playing opposite Charlie Chaplin in 1914's "Tillie's Punctured Romance," her presence in film and stage was barely noticeable. The veteran actress, who first appeared on the stage in 1897 and in film ten years later, was so frustrated with the profession that she was considering working as a housekeeper on a Long Island estate. An old friend, screenwriter Frances Marion, contacted her to appear in a major role in 1927's 'The Callahans and the Murphy,' a part she felt the 59-year-old Dressler was a perfect fit. With glowing reviews, Dressler saw offers from Hollywood pour in, especially when they heard her forceful voice that was perfect for the emerging technology of sound. An Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930's "Min and Bill" solidified her Hollywood comeback.

But at the height of her career, Dressler was diagnosed with terminal cancer, a condition she wasn't told for several months. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who just signed her to a three-picture contract, was told by her doctors the prognosis was not good. Mayer took a personal interest to make sure the actress' health followed a strict regimen. He restricted her travel, even though she groused at missing a New York City charity event she was headlining. When Mayer arranged for an experimental cancer therapy, Dressler finally understood his concerns.

During the filming of "Tugboat Annie," she was limited to three hours a day on the set. For long shots of her, a stand-in took her place. MGM arranged for most of the movie, set in Seattle, to be filmed in and around the Hollywood area. Despite a couch sitting on the side of the set for her whenever there was a break in filming, Dressler, in her autobiography, mentioned the storm scenes were the most physically challenging she ever went through as an actor. "One coastwise sailor in the cast told me that in twenty years' experience aboard tramp steamers he had never encountered rougher seas than those manufactured in our studios," she wrote. "Able-bodied men were slapped down by waves the script described as mild. There was more than one arm in a sling, and at least one leg in a plaster cast before we got through."

Her character, Annie Brennan, was based on Thea Foss, the founder of a successful Seattle-based tugboat company whose semi-fictitious personality was featured in a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by Norman Raine. The film portrays Annie's struggles with an alcoholic husband, Terry (Wallace Beery), while sustaining her loving relationship with her son Alec (Robert Young). Alec's engagement to a competitor's daughter, Pat Severn (Maureen O'Sullivan), causes trouble down the road. Director Mervyn LeRoy took his film crew up to Seattle to film the exteriors, making "Tugboat Annie" the first Hollywood movie to be shot in Seattle. MGM rented out one of Foss Launch & Tug Company's tugboats and called it the "Narcissus." The real tugboat seen in the film, renamed the "Arthur Foss," today is docked next to the Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center.

With the marquee attraction of Dressler and Beery, "Tugboat Annie" made MGM a profit of over $1 million, the richest take for the studio that year. The movie was so popular there were two remakes, in 1940 with Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, and in 1945 with Ann Darwell. Meanwhile, Dressler was able to fulfill the three-picture deal with her final movie, November 1933's "Christopher Bean," which exists but has never been released for home or television viewing. A copy has reportedly been stored in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, N. Y. She died on July 28, 1934, from cancer, at age 65. Dressler is interred in the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

TUGBOAT ANNIE, the `old sea cow,' pilots her beloved Narcissus around Puget Sound, constantly on the lookout for the shenanigans of her drunken husband. Their son strives to become the skipper of a great liner, but his success will imperil his father's life & break his mother's heart...

Marie Dressler & Wallace Beery are nothing short of wonderful in this funny, touching film. The roles are a comfortable fit - they wear them like old clothes. With their life-worn faces & rumpled bodies, they embody a decent commonality which gives their acting the little something extra that pushes it over the top and makes their performances very special.

Dressler was queen of the box office when she made this film, absolutely beloved by millions of American movie fans. Almost a force of nature, a cinematic Earth Mother, she was already carrying the cancer which would kill her the very next year. Beery would go on to other memorable roles, but his teamings with Dressler would always remain unique.

Robert Young & Maureen O'Sullivan nicely play the young people, but they are completely overshadowed by the two old pros.

Location settings help the movie's ambiance terrifically. The film is based on stories written by Norman Reilly Raine and published in the Saturday Evening Post.

This film is awfully campy and is a pretty insignificant film. However, this isn't really that bad a thing, as the acting and writing make this movie so much fun. I loved Marie Dressler's wonderful performance in the title role--it was funny and incredibly entertaining. And, combining her with Wallace Beery was a brilliant idea--they worked well together. The only odd thing about this movie was casting Robert Young as their grown son. I can't imagine WHAT a child of this ugly union would look like, but I would imagine it would look more like Mike Mizurki or Victor McLaglen! A great example of wonderful old-fashioned fun from MGM.

I thought Marie Dressler was great and died too soon, and that's the main reason for my rating on "Tugboat Annie". She carries the picture and was better than she was in "Min and Bill", the one she won an AA for three years before. The narrative here is more a series of vignettes on the life of a tugboat skipper, strung together and concerning the same group of people. The plot seems disjointed and each episode is an end in itself.

What is really annoying is the presence, or rather the character played by Wallace Beery. He was adept at playing a big slob but he overdoes it in 'Tugboat Annie", so much so that you wish he would get washed overboard or that she would leave him ashore, preferably on foreign soil. There is no way anyone could put up with incompetence and irresponsibility of this kind. He plays an unabashed drunk who nearly ruins her financially, and the ending barely justifies his behavior to that point.

Robert Young and Maureen O'Sullivan are along for appearances but with little to do. But it is a chance to see one of the best comediennes ever to grace the Silver Screen and Hollywood was poorer for it when she passed on.