In the Golden Age of Hollywood, a woman like Marie Dressler defied the odds. In her 60s, with a face lined by experience and a body that was not the studio’s ideal, she became the biggest box-office star of the early 1930s. Her success proved an inconvenient truth: audiences craved authenticity and character. Yet, her template was quickly buried under the studio system’s obsession with ingénues. For the next fifty years, actresses like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn fought bitterly for good roles as they aged, often producing their own projects or turning to the stage.