Mae Busch

Busch was born in Melbourne, Victoria to popular Australian vaudeville performers Elizabeth Maria Lay and Frederick William Busch.{{cite news |title=Births |newspaper=The Age |date=20 June 1891 |page=5 |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article190623188}} Her mother had been active since 1883 under the stage names Dora Devere and then Dora Busch; she toured India with Hudson's Surprise Party and toured New Zealand twice.{{cite news |title=Otago Witness |date=24 January 1895 |location=New Zealand |page=37}} They continued to tour with various companies with short breaks when their two children were born, Dorothy in 1889 (who lived for only four months) and Annie May in 1891. Following a concert tour of New Zealand, the family left for the United States via Tahiti.{{cite news |title=Auckland Star |date=8 August 1896}} They departed on 8 August 1896 and arrived in San Francisco at the end of 1896 or in early 1897.

While her parents were touring the United States, six-year-old Annie May was placed in a convent school in New Jersey. At age 12, she joined her parents as the Busch Devere Trio, which was active from 1903 until 1912. As Mae Busch, she performed with her mother in Guy Fletch Bragdon's The Fixer to good reviews, and in 1911, they featured in Tom Reeves' Big Show Burlesque. Mae's big break came in March 1912 when she replaced Lillian Lorraine as the lead female in Over the River with Eddie Foy.{{cite news |title=New York Herald |date=28 March 1912}}

File:Mae Busch Stars of the Photoplay.jpg

Mae's first film appearances are reputed to be in The Agitator and The Water Nymph, both released in 1912. There is some doubt about Mae's being in these films as the production of both films in California appears to clash with Busch's commitments in New York.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} In 1915 she began working at Keystone Studios, where she appeared in comedy two-reelers. Her dalliance with studio chief Mack Sennett famously ended his engagement to actress Mabel Normand—who had actually been Busch's mentor and friend—when Normand walked in on the pair. According to Minta Durfee's unverifiable claim, Busch, who was known for pinpoint throwing accuracy, inflicted a serious head injury on Normand by striking her with a vase.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

At the pinnacle of her film career, Busch was known as the "versatile vamp". She starred in such feature films as The Devil's Pass Key (1920) and Foolish Wives (1923), both directed by Erich von Stroheim, and in The Unholy Three (1925), with Lon Chaney. She soon walked out on her contract at Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer and had a nervous breakdown.{{harvnb|Maltin|1973|p=112}} She regained her health and resumed working at both major and minor studios; her best opportunity was a starring role in Universal's 1927 drama Perch of the Devil, with Busch cast against type as a sympathetic young bride confronted by a rival. The film's climax was a spectacular flood sequence; this footage from Perch of the Devil was reused in later Universal productions for more than a decade.

In 1926, producer Hal Roach began casting "name" dramatic stars in his short comedies: Priscilla Dean, Theda Bara, Herbert Rawlinson, Agnes Ayres, and Lionel Barrymore among them. Mae Busch joined Roach's "All Stars" for a leading role in Love 'em and Weep (1927), which began her long association with Laurel and Hardy. The short received good distribution and resulted in Busch resuming her feature-film career, including a return to MGM for the 1928 Lon Chaney feature While the City Sleeps.

In 1929, many stars of silent films faced an uncertain future, with their talents less in demand as talking pictures caught on. When a short-subject assignment came along, Busch grabbed it. It was again for the Hal Roach studio in the Laurel & Hardy comedy Unaccustomed as We Are (1929). It was the team's first "all-talking" comedy, and stage-trained Mae Busch handled her dialogue well as Hardy's put-upon wife. She appeared in 12 more Laurel and Hardy comedies, often displaying her versatility. She alternated between shrewish, gold-digging floozies (Chickens Come Home, Come Clean), Oliver Hardy's volatile wife (Sons of the Desert, Their First Mistake), and more sympathetic roles (Them Thar Hills, Tit for Tat, The Fixer Uppers). Her last role in a Laurel and Hardy film was in The Bohemian Girl, again as Hardy's combative spouse, released in 1936.

The same year, she was featured in the low-budget serial The Clutching Hand, but it did not advance her career. From then, her film roles were often uncredited. Overall, she had roles in approximately 130 movies from 1912 to 1946. Jackie Gleason later mentioned her name on his TV show as "the ever-popular Mae Busch".

In 2014 The Grim Game, the believed-lost 1919 film that was the first feature to star Harry Houdini, was discovered and restored by Rick Schmidlin for Turner Classic Movies.{{cite news |last=King |first=Susan |title=Classic Hollywood: Once Thought Lost, Harry Houdini's 'Grim Game' Film Reappears |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=26 March 2015}} Busch appears, credited as Bush.

File:Thomas Tate and Mae Busch.jpg

Busch was married three times: to actor Francis McDonald (1915–22), to John Earl Cassell (1926–29), and to civil engineer Thomas C. Tate (1936–her death).

Busch died on 20 April 1946 at age 54 at a San Fernando Valley sanitarium, where she had been ill for five months with colon cancer.{{cite news |title=Death Claims Mae Busch, 44 |newspaper=The Los Angeles Times |page=A1 |date=22 April 1946}}{{efn|The headline mistakenly listed her age as 44.}}State of California. County of Los Angeles. Death Certificate for Mae Busch, 1946. District 1801, Registrar's No. 7081.

For her contributions to the film industry, Busch was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 with a motion pictures star located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.{{cite web |url=http://www.walkoffame.com/mae-busch |title=Hollywood Walk of Fame – Mae Busch |website=walkoffame.com |publisher=Hollywood Chamber of Commerce |access-date=December 28, 2017}}

In the 1970s, it was discovered that her ashes had remained unclaimed and were in vaultage at Chapel of the Pines Crematory. The Way Out West Tent, a Los Angeles chapter of The Sons of the Desert, the Laurel and Hardy appreciation society, paid for their removal from vaultage and placement in a publicly accessible niche at Chapel of the Pines.{{cite web |url=http://www.wayoutwest.org/busch/facts.html |title=Mae Busch |website=Way Out West Tent}} The memorial plaque incorrectly lists her year of birth as 1901.{{cite web |url=https://hometownstohollywood.com/international/australia/mae-busch/ |title=Mae Busch |date=5 August 2019}}

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;Bibliography

• {{cite book |last=Maltin |first=Leonard |author-link=Leonard Maltin |date=1973 |title=The Laurel and Hardy Book |publisher=Curtis |location=New York |oclc=4817569}}

{{Portal|Biography}}

{{Commons category}}

• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Mae Busch |sopt=t}}
• {{IMDb name|id=0123994}}
• {{Find a Grave|6662}}
• [http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/person/2797/mae-busch Mae Busch] at Virtual History
• [http://www.wayoutwest.org/busch/ Mae Busch] at the Way Out West Tent

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Category:Actresses from Melbourne

Category:Australian expatriate actresses in the United States

Category:Australian film actresses

Category:Australian silent film actresses

Category:Australian stage actresses

Category:Hal Roach Studios actors

Category:Deaths from colorectal cancer in California

Category:Australian vaudeville performers

Category:1891 births

Category:1946 deaths

Category:Burials at Chapel of the Pines Crematory

Category:20th-century Australian actresses

Category:Australian women comedians

Category:Slapstick comedians