Called "Lulie" as a child.
Died after surgery for intestinal ailment in Woodland Hills CA.
During the first presentations of the Academy Awards she received a citation of merit.
She was the daughter of a railroad engineer who had once stopped some rowdies from badgering a very chubby-sized newsboy on the train. That newsboy later became the celebrated composer Paul Dresser, and it was he who, in grateful memory of her father, gave Louise her stage name and wrote "My Gal Sal" for her to sing.
Took her professional last name as a tribute to her good friend, songwriter Paul Dresser. Dresser, the elder brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, was a popular songwriter of the turn-of-the-last-century whose best-known songs today are "My Gal Sal" and "On The Banks of the Wabash Far Away.".