Plot
In spite of the constant difficulties imposed by her rival Captain Bullwinkle, the widowed Tugboat Annie manages to hold her own in the competitive tugboat business in the port of Secoma. But with the aid of Eddie Kent, a young sailor who works for her, and Peggy Armstrong, a rich socialite who is in love with Eddie, Annie overcomes the odds.
Keywords: 1930s, b-movie, blackmail, boat-accident, business-competition, car-accident, character-name-in-title, contract, drunkenness, father-daughter-relationship
Tugboat Annie is a 1933 movie starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery as a comically quarrelsome middle-aged couple who operate a tugboat. Dressler and Beery were MGM's most popular screen team at that time, having recently made Min and Bill (1930) together, for which Dressler had won an Oscar.
The boisterous Tugboat Annie character first appeared in a series of stories in the Saturday Evening Post written by the author Norman Reilly Raine which were based on the life of Thea Foss of Tacoma, Washington. There is also a theory that her character is loosely based on Kate A. Sutton, secretary and dispatcher for the Providence Steamboat Company during the 1920s.
Tugboat Annie also features Robert Young and Maureen O'Sullivan as the requisite pair of young lovers. The movie was written by Norman Reilly Raine and Zelda Sears, and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Capt. Clarance Howden Piloted the boat which was Owned by Foss Tug And Barge of Seattle, His son Richard Howden is seen rolling rope during the credits. Capt. Howden retired from Foss after 53 years of service, and was Fosses 2nd Capt..