Elsie Louise Ferguson (August 19, 1883 – November 15, 1961) was an American stage and film actress.
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Friday, August 20, 2021. 10:22. AM.
Elsie Ferguson - Actress.
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1. Profile :
(Publicity photo of Ferguson (1913)
Born August 19, 1885, New York City, U.S.
Died November 15, 1961 (aged 76), New London, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation Actress
Years active 1902–1943
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Spouse
Frederick C. Hoey (1907-1914) (divorced)
Thomas Clarke, Jr. (1916-1923) (divorced)
Frederick Worlock (1924-1930) (divorced)
Victor Augustus Seymour Egan (1934-1956) (his death)
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2. Introduction :
Elsie Louise Ferguson (August 19, 1883 – November 15, 1961) was an American stage and film actress.
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3. Early life :
Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Hiram and Amelia Ferguson. Her father was a successful attorney.[2] Raised and educated in Manhattan, she became interested in the theater at a young age and made her stage debut at 17 as a chorus girl in a musical comedy. For almost two years, from 1903 to 1905, she was a cast member in The Girl from Kays. In 1908, she was leading lady to Edgar Selwyn in Pierre of the Plains. By 1909, after several years apprenticeship under several producers, including Charles Frohman, Klaw & Erlanger, Charles Dillingham and Henry B. Harris, she was a major Broadway star, starring in Such a Little Queen. In 1910, she spent time on the stage in London. Actresses Evelyn Nesbit and Ethel Barrymore were friends of hers.
During World War I, a number of Broadway stars organized a campaign to sell Liberty Bonds from the theatre stage before the performance as well as at highly publicized appearances at places such as the New York Public Library. On one occasion, Ferguson is reputed to have sold $85,000 worth of bonds in less than an hour.
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4. Stardom :
*The Theatre pub. 1913
At the peak of her popularity, several film studios offered her a contract but she declined them all until widely respected New York-based French director Maurice Tourneur proposed she appear in the lead role as a sophisticated patrician in his 1917 silent film Barbary Sheep. She also may have consented to films because she no longer had the protection of her Broadway employers Henry B. Harris, who died on the Titanic in 1912, and Charles Frohman, who perished on the Lusitania in 1915. Producer and director Adolph Zukor then signed her to an 18-film, three-year, $5,000-per-week contract.
Following this first film, Ferguson was billed prominently in promotional campaigns, and starred in two more films directed by Tourneur under a lucrative contract from Paramount Pictures that paid her $1,000 per day of filming in addition to her weekly contract income. Her only surviving complete silent film is The Witness for the Defense (1919), co-starring Warner Oland and performed as a play in 1911 by her friend Ethel Barrymore. A surviving fragment of footage of Ferguson from The Lie or The Avalanche can be seen in Paramount's The House That Shadows Built (1931). Other brief surviving footage of Ferguson is preserved in Paramount's A Trip to Paramountown (1922)
*c. 1920
Continuing to play roles of elegant society women, Ferguson was quickly dubbed "The Aristocrat of the Silent Screen", but the aristocratic label also was because she was known as a difficult and sometimes arrogant personality with whom to work. Many of the films she agreed to do were because they were adaptations of stage plays with which she was familiar.
Elsie Ferguson eventually followed the move west and bought a home in the hills of Hollywood, California. In 1920, she traveled to the Middle East and Europe. She fell in love with Paris and the French Riviera, and within a few years, she bought a permanent home there.
In 1921, she accepted another contract offer from Paramount Pictures to star in four films to be spread over a two-year period. One of these was the 1921 film entitled Forever in which she starred with Wallace Reid.
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5. "Talkies" and retirement :
In 1925, she made only one film before returning to the Broadway stage. In 1930, she made her first sound film that also would be her final film, titled Scarlet Pages, which is now preserved in the Library of Congress. Although her voice came across well enough, at age 47, she was well past her prime for fans who wanted to see her as the great youthful beauty she had once been.
Well known as difficult to work with, temperamental, and argumentative, she married four times. Following her final marriage at age 51, she and her husband acquired a farm in Connecticut and divided their time between it and her home in Cap d'Antibes.
Ferguson made her final appearance on Broadway in 1943, at the age of 60, that met with critical acclaim. She played in Outrageous Fortune, a play written by her neighbor Rose Franken. The play closed eight weeks after it opened. Critics hailed Ferguson's performance as "glowing" and having "the charm and winning manner of old."
Elsie Ferguson died in Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut, in 1961. She lived on an estate called White Gate Farms. She was interred in the Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, Connecticut. A very wealthy woman with no heirs and a lover of animals, she left a large part of her considerable estate to a variety of charities, including several for animal welfare.
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6. Filmography :
Year Title Role Notes
1917 Barbary Sheep Lady Katherine 'Kitty' Wyverne
1917 The Rise of Jennie Cushing Jenny Cushing
1918 Rose of the World Rosamond English
1918 The Song of Songs Lily Kardos
1918 The Lie Elinor Shale
1918 A Doll's House Nora Helmer
1918 The Danger Mark Geraldine Seagrave
1918 Heart of the Wilds Jen Galbraith
1918 The Spirit That Wins Elsie Short; for war effort
1918 Under the Greenwood Tree Mary Hamilton
1919 His Parisian Wife Fauvette
1919 The Marriage Price Helen Tremaine
1919 Eyes of the Soul Gloria Swann
1919 The Avalanche Chichita / Madame Delano / Helene
1919 A Society Exile Nora Shard, aka Christine
1919 The Witness for the Defense Stella Derrick
1919 Counterfeit Virginia Griswold
1920 His House in Order Nina Graham
1920 Lady Rose's Daughter Julie le Breton / Lady Rose / Lady Maude
1921 Sacred and Profane Love Carlotta Peel
1921 Footlights Lisa Parsinova / Lizzie Parsons
1921 Forever Mimsi
1922 Outcast Miriam
1922 A Trip to Paramountown Herself Documentary short
1924 Broadway After Dark Herself Short
1925 The Unknown Lover Elaine Kent
1930 Scarlet Pages Mary Bancroft (final film role)
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7. Elsie Ferguson Career Review :
1. Introduction :
Elsie Ferguson was a major stage and movie star. She appeared in nearly 30 Broadway productions between 1901 and 1944. She ranked among the great stage actresses of her day, like Ethel Barrymore, Lynne Fontanne, and Alice Brady.
Ferguson came, reluctantly, to films in 1917 and starred in 24 films thru 1925. In one of the great tragedies of film history, only one of these films is known to survive. She returned to make one talkie in 1930, a film version of her stage play Scarlet Pages. This film survives and has been shown of Turner Classic Movies several times.
Like many stage stars of the day, Ferguson looked down on movies (although she was nicknamed the “Aristocrat of the Screen”) and only agreed to make Barbary Sheep for ArtCraft/Paramount after Adolf Zukor signed her to an astonishing 18-film contract (at $5,000 per week) for a period of three years!
2. Film debut with Pedro de Cordoba :
The actress Linda Arvidsen, an early gossip columnist (writing as Mrs. D.W. Griffith), gushed in the November 1917 issue of Film Fun, “She has beauty, charm, refinement and
knows how to walk, talk, and act as a lady should.” She went on to conclude that “most of all, Barbary Sheep brings to the screen a welcome, refreshing personality in Elsie Ferguson.”
The debut film was apparently and hit, and Ferguson quickly followed up with The Rise of Jenny Cushing, co-starring with Elliott Dexter in a story about a young woman’s attempts to escape her life in the slums.
Taking a break from the stage, Ferguson starred in a whopping 15 films in 1918 and 1919. Her leading men in these films included Wyndham Standing, Thomas Meighan, and Eugene O’Brien. The only survivor is The Witness for the Defense, in which she starred with Standing, Warner Oland, and Vernon Steele.
ELSIE STRANGLEStory has Ferguson summoned from England to India to care for her ailing father. While there she’s coerced into marrying the cruel Oland. After she is accused of killing her husband, she’s saved by Standing when he lies under oath during her trial. But he has ulterior motives for saving her. It’s out only chance to see Ferguson in action and she suffers with the best of them.
3. With Wyndham Standing :
Ferguson had an unusual stipulation written into her initial Paramount contract. It required that a portion of each film she made be shot in Florida, where she had a winter home. In The Witness for the Defense, a chunk of the film takes place in India, and Ferguson dutifully fights her way through a Florida swamp subbing for India.
*Elsie_Ferguson_in_Outcast
By 1920 Ferguson had returned to the stage and curtailed her film output. She starred in His House in Order, re-teaming with Steele, and played three roles in Lady Rose’s Daughter with Holmes Herbert. In 1921 she signed a lucrative contract with Paramount and starred with Conrad Nagel in the film version of her stage hit, Sacred and Profane Love (with William Desmond Taylor directing) and with Reginald Denny in Footlights. This one sounds especially interesting as Ferguson stars as a fake Russian actress who’s a big hit on Broadway. But she tires of the footlights and returns to her small New England town as her real self: plain Lizzie Parsons.
11b57a1f7609c96e31397eafca651814Her final film of 1921 saw her starring with Wallace Reid in Forever, which was actually billed as Peter Ibbetson in some towns. If the title is familiar, it’s because it was filmed in 1935 with Gary Cooper and Ann Harding. She made only one film in 1922, Outcast, playing a streetwalker redeemed by the love of a decent man.
The_Unknown_LoverShe returned for one last silent film in 1925 (at age 42), starring with Frank Mayo in The Unknown Lover, a film she forever refused to discuss. Indeed, Motion Picture News said in its review, “The fault lies chiefly with the story, which is too improbable and absurd to pass muster with audiences demanding at least a semblance of logic.” There was a gentle hint that Ferguson, at 42, was perhaps a tad old to be playing the “young wife.”
movingwor39chal_1074After making her talkie debut in Scarlet Pages in 1930, she retired from the screen altogether, but she signed for a co-starring role in the planned Becky Sharp that pal Lowell Sherman was planning with Miriam Hopkins in the title role. But Sherman died suddenly and the film ultimately was made by Rouben Mamoulian with Ferguson’s expected role of Lade Bareacres going to Billie Burke.
4. Final film appearance :
Ferguson starred on Broadway one more time. In 1944 she starred in the critical hit Outrageous Fortune, but the play lasted only two months. In her early 60s, she retired forever as a wealthy woman, splitting her time between her Connecticut farm and her estate in Cap d’Antibes, France.
Elsie Ferguson died in November of 1961.
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