Edith Massey (born Edith Dornfield; 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 Edith Dornfield on May 28, 1918, in New York City, she was the daughter of Samuel and Bessie (Lansnek) Dornfield. Samuel, who was born in Austria or Ukraine, died about five months after Massey's birth. 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". Massey's mother died March 1, 1925. In the 1975 documentary Love Letter to Edie, Massey said she was raised in an orphanage and eventually was placed in a foster home. Her foster family members were cruel to her and, as a teenager, she ran away to Hollywood. In the documentary Divine Waters (1981), Massey explained that she was "born in New York, but raised in Denver....I was movie crazy, so I went to California to try and get in the movies, but instead I became a barmaid." In 1946, Massey married a soldier in Reno, leaving him about five years later because she got "restless". However, in Divine Waters, Massey said that the marriage lasted "about seven years. It was my fault; I left him for another man, so I blame myself for it." She worked in several odd jobs through the years, and she eventually relocated to Baltimore, Maryland where she worked as a barmaid at Pete's Hotel in the Fell's Point neighborhood. Filmmaker John Waters met Massey while she was working at Pete's Hotel in 1969 and offered her a role as herself in the film Multiple Maniacs. In the early 1970s, she quit her job at Pete's and opened a thrift store called Edith's Shopping Bag, also in Fell's Point. Collaboration with John Waters Massey gained a cult following from her appearances in five films directed by John Waters: Multiple