According to biographer Betty Lee in The Unlikeliest Star, "It seemed fairly obvious..that although MGM was impressed with Dressler's potential...the top office did not know how to handle their unique new contract player. Louis B. Mayer, who had already informed his minions that he wanted Dressler to be marketed as a mother figure who was also a battered version of life's wars, asked her to lunch in his private bungalow on the Culver City lot. Not only did Dressler appear to be a substantial mother figure in real life, MGM's boss was also aware that the actress exuded an easy air of upper-class panache. She was, he decided, a far classier individual than the Hollywood glamour girls he often professed to disdain."
In The Girl Said No, William Haines plays a college sports star who surprises everyone with his money-making schemes and, in a supporting role, Dressler plays a befuddled spinster who is offered bonds for sale by Haines. Variety reported that "The movie has a few genuine laughs, a title that has possibilities it doesn't live up to and a cast of players, all out of their element except Polly Moran and Marie Dressler."
Dressler would go on to star in a total of seven films in 1930 and win the Best Actress Oscar® for her performance in Min and Bill, opposite Wallace Beery.
Producer: Sam Wood
Director: Sam Wood
Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Charles Macarthur, from a story by A. P. Younger
Cinematography: Ira H. Morgan
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film Editing: Frank Sullivan
Cast: William Haines (Tom Ward), Leila Hyams (Mary Howe), Polly Moran (Polly), Marie Dressler (Hettie Brown), Francis X. Bushman (J. M. McAndrews), Clara Blandick (Mrs. Ward), William Janney (Jimmie Ward).
BW-89m.
