1906 Yukon Nuggets

Marjorie Rambeau - From the Dawson Stage to Hollywood Fame

When she was only ten years old, Marjorie Rambeau performed in the mining camps of Nome.

“...With my hair cropped close ...the  men would shake gold dust into my cap, “ said Rambeau later in her career, “But nobody suspected I wasn’t a boy.”

No one would have made that mistake during her second tour of the north. When she was seventeen years old, she was part of a troupe that came to Dawson City in mid-June of 1906. Fatty Arbuckle, who later became famous as a silent movie star, was also in the troupe.

On opening night at the Auditorium Theatre, better known now as the Palace Grand, the elite of Dawson attended to watch Miss Rambeau  the leading role in “Merely Mary Ann.” But within weeks, the theatre company had collapsed and Marjorie and her mother were stranded in Dawson for the winter.

Dawsonites offered their support to put on a benefit performance with Marjorie in the lead role. The event was a success. Throughout the fall and winter, Marjorie Rambeau kept busy giving private instruction in elocution and directing amateur performers in a string of plays – with Marjorie in the starring role.

Throughout the winter of nineteen oh six (1906) and nineteen oh seven (1907), she thrilled  audiences in Dawson City, but they could not convince her to remain in the Klondike. At the beginning of April, she and her mother hit the trail south to work for a stock company Outside.

Rambeau went on to a colourful and successful career in film and theatre. She was twice nominated for Oscars as best supporting actress, and she has a star in the Hollywood walk of fame. In her later years, she reminisced about her time in Dawson – with a few Hollywood-style  embellishments.

She claimed that when she left Dawson in the spring of nineteen oh seven (1907), Robert Service was there to see her off. At that time, Service hadn’t even set foot in the Klondike!

The men of the Klondike? “Rough and tough they were,” she recalled ten years later, “They had notches cut in their pistol butts and they had some evil ways.”

She recalled that during her stay in Dawson City, ALASKA, the governor general, who was appointed by the President of the United States, presented her with the first rose to bloom in the spring.

It would appear that the people of Dawson remembered her time in their town – more clearly than she did.

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Michael Gates.