A Great Big Girl Like Me: The Films of Marie Dressler

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I thank Joan Catapano, Rebecca McNulty Schreiber, and everyone at the University of Illinois Press for their faith in my manuscript and their extraordinary efforts on its behalf. Thanks also to Kay Armatage, Jane M. Gaines, and Christine Gledhill for putting together the Women and Film History International book series, in which I am proud to have this work included. I owe a tremendous debt to the staffs of many archives whose patience, knowledge, and generosity have been nothing short of amazing: Jenny Romero and Barbara Hall of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Jared Case at the George Eastman House, and Ned Comstock at the University of Southern California Cinema /Television Library. This book is also far richer for the efforts of the wonderful members of the Marie Dressler Foundation of Cobourg, Ontario, and especially Barbara Garrick. Thanks, too, to the many scholars who have given me feedback and made this work immeasurably stronger for their insight and wit, especially Matthew Bernstein, David Cook, David Desser, Jennifer Bean, and Martine Watson Brownley. Thank you to all my colleagues at the University of Oklahoma who have pitched in to help with this project: Sam Huskey, Ben Alpers, Ben Keppel, and Andy Horton. Boundless thanks, also, to the administrative staffs, whose kindness and skills I shamelessly exploited in trying to get this done: Jane Dye,Valoree Biggs,Debbie Rush,Sarah Denton, and Annie Hall. I am so grateful to Matthew Kennedy and Roberta Raider Sloan, scholars who have already done tremendous research on Marie Dressler and who were generous enough to share some of their resources with me. Two people in particular have been heroic in their aid; I could not have gotten started on this project without their exceptional help. Thank you to Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive for giving me access to his restored print of Tillie’s Punctured Romance and for talking to me about the process of restoration. I am equally indebted to Scott McGee for helping me acquire a trove of Dressler’s still-obscure movies so I could begin this book. My family has put up with a lot in order to see me through the long process of writing this book. Loving thanks to my parents, whom I wish I could see more often, and to my husband, Jim Zeigler, who spent the month after our wedding locked in an apartment with no cable TV and very little air conditioning so I could finish writing. Thanks, honey. Finally, I would be lost without the kindness of my colleague, the formidable Joanna Rapf, who loves Marie Dressler as much as I do. No new scholar has ever benefited from smarter advice, more unwavering support, or warmer friendship. x • acknowledgments A Great Big Girl Like Me ...