Edith Massey

Edith Massey (born Edith Y. Dornfeld; May 28, 1918 – October 24, 1984) was an American actress and singer. Massey was best known for her appearances in a series of movies by director John Waters. She was one of the Dreamlanders, Waters's stable of regular cast and crew members. Early life Born as Edith Dornfeld on May 28, 1918, in New York City, she was the daughter of Bessie (née Lansnek, 1896–1925) and Samuel Dornfeld (1891–1918), an Austrian-born Jewish couple. Samuel, who was born in Austria and was a World War I veteran, died five months after Massey's birth due to complications as a result from a gas attack during the war. The 1920 United States Federal Census recorded Edith, age one, living on Lewis Street in Manhattan, New York, with her three-year-old sister, Etta, and their widowed mother, Bessie, who was 22 years old. The following year, on March 9, 1921, Bessie married her second husband, Max Grodsky, in Denver, Colorado. According to Massey's half-brother, Morris Grodsky, their parents "just threw up their hands one day, dropped off those who couldn't fend for themselves at a local orphanage or 'home,' and disappeared". According to Grodsky himself, the orphanage they were left at, which was religiously Jewish, was in good conditions. Massey's mother died March 1, 1925.