Paul Dresser - Legacy

Legacy

Dresser was portrayed in the biopic My Gal Sal (1942) by actor Victor Mature. Dresser was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In total, Dresser composed and published 158 songs, along with a number of other unpublished songs. His last work was published posthumously in 1906, "The Judgment Day is Coming."

Many landmarks in Vigo County, Indiana, are named after Paul Dresser, including the Dresser Memorial Bridge and Dresser Drive. The unplatted community of Dresser, situated on the west bank of the Wabash River in Warren County, was also named for him.

His birthplace is maintained at Henry Fairbanks Park in Terre Haute by the Vigo County Historical Society. Dresser Drive, a street in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Anderson, Indiana, is named for him, as is the Dresser Bridge, which crosses the Wabash River, near Attica, Indiana.

Theodore Dreiser wrote an account of his brother's life in his book Twelve Men, published in 1919. A recent academic study of Dresser's life, On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away: The Life and Music of Paul Dresser by Clayton W. Henderson, was published by the Indiana Historical Society Press in 2003.