Elsie Ferguson

Elsie Ferguson
Publicity photo of Ferguson (1913)
Born	(1883-08-19)August 19, 1883 New York City, U.S.
Died	November 15, 1961(1961-11-15) (aged 78) New London, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1902–1943
Spouse(s)	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)

Elsie Louise Ferguson (August 19, 1883 – November 15, 1961) was an American stage and film actress. Seen by some as an early feminist, she promoted suffrage, which she discussed in interviews, and supported animal rights.

Early life

Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Hiram and Amelia Ferguson. Her father was a successful attorney. 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.

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.

"Talkies" and retirement

Ferguson's last silent film before returning to Broadway was the 1925 drama The Unknown Lover. 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. The film was based on a 1929 Broadway production of the same name that she also starred in. She was described as having a "pleasantly low-pitched voice with perfect diction."

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."

Personal life and death

Ferguson was first married to Fred Hoey. She married Thomas Benedict Clarke in 1916. They were divorced in July 1923. On May 5, 1924, in Great Neck, Long Island, she married Frederick Worlock. She 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.

Filmography

Paramount-Artcraft lantern slide announcing Ferguson as an Artcraft player.

Elsie Ferguson in Footlights

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1902	Jack and the Beanstalk	Fairy
1917	Barbary Sheep	Lady Katherine 'Kitty' Wyverne	Lost film Eight minutes survive
1917	The Rise of Jennie Cushing	Jenny Cushing	Lost film
1918	Rose of the World	Rosamond English
1918	The Song of Songs	Lily Kardos	Lost film
1918	The Lie	Elinor Shale	Lost film
1918	A Doll's House	Nora Helmer	Lost film
1918	The Danger Mark	Geraldine Seagrave	Lost film
1918	Heart of the Wilds	Jen Galbraith	Lost film
1918	The Spirit That Wins	Elsie	Short Lost film
1918	Under the Greenwood Tree	Mary Hamilton	Lost film
1919	His Parisian Wife	Fauvette	Lost film
1919	The Marriage Price	Helen Tremaine	Lost film
1919	Eyes of the Soul	Gloria Swann	Lost film
1919	The Avalanche	Chichita / Madame Delano / Helene	Lost film
1919	A Society Exile	Nora Shard, aka Christine	Lost film
1919	The Witness for the Defense	Stella Derrick
1919	Counterfeit	Virginia Griswold	Lost film
1920	His House in Order	Nina Graham	Lost film
1920	Lady Rose's Daughter	Julie le Breton / Lady Rose / Lady Maude	Lost film
1921	Sacred and Profane Love	Carlotta Peel	Lost film
1921	Footlights	Lisa Parsinova / Lizzie Parsons	Lost film
1921	Forever	Mimsi	Lost film
1922	Outcast	Miriam	Lost film
1922	A Trip to Paramountown	Herself	Documentary short
1924	Broadway After Dark	Herself	Short Lost film
1925	The Unknown Lover	Elaine Kent	Lost film
1930	Scarlet Pages	Mary Bancroft

External links

• Elsie Ferguson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Elsie Ferguson at IMDb
• Elsie Ferguson photographic gallery NYP Library
• Elsie Ferguson at Virtual History
• Elsie Ferguson in scenes from many of her lost films and stage scene with husband Frederick Worlock (Univ of Washington Sayre collection)
• Elsie Ferguson and Nance O'Neil in the 1927 play The House of Women
• Elsie Ferguson at Find a Grave
• portrait of Ferguson in 1924(WaybackMachine),..flip side text(Wayback)
• PeriodPaper
• Ferguson and namesake niece, 1933
• back Ferguson and niece 1933
• Broadway Photographs(University of South Carolina)