Elsie Ferguson
Elsie Ferguson (born August 19, 1883 in New York City , New York , † November 5, 1961 in New London , Connecticut ) was an American film actress of the silent film era .
Life
Elsie Ferguson was the only child of a successful lawyer. She grew up very privileged and in great prosperity, but as an adult she clung to socialist ideas. She first appeared on stage at seventeen, and within a few years she became a star on Broadway , appearing in musicals, comedies and Ibsen tragedies. She was drawn into the Harry Kendall Thaw scandal as the friend of her stage colleague Evelyn Nesbit . Thaw, Nesbit's husband, had shot her lover, the architect Stanford White, during a theater performance in Madison Square Garden . The affair is dealt with in EL Doctorow's novel Ragtime , which was filmed by Miloš Forman .
The theater star Elsie Ferguson was showered with offers by Hollywood . She eventually signed a contract with Adolph Zukor for eighteen films in three years. She was making $ 5,000 a week. Her first director was Maurice Tourneur , who cast her as the elegant high society lady in his 1917 film Barbary Sheep . Her first day of shooting was a rather traumatic experience: “My experience in front of the camera was the most terrible thing I had to go through in my life. It seemed to me as if this little black box was a monster that grinned and mocked me at my feeble attempts to portray emotions in front of it. "Tourneur helped her through the shooting, the film became a success and Tourneur her favorite director.
Ferguson was known as "The Aristocrat of the Screen" because she mostly portrayed elegant women of society, often in adaptations of plays in which she had already appeared on Broadway. She repeatedly interrupted her film career for the stage. In 1930 she made her first and last sound film , Scarlet Pages , then retired from the film business. In 1943 Elsie Ferguson also said goodbye to Broadway.
All Elsie Ferguson silent films except The Witness for the Defense (1919) are lost. That's why silent movie lovers call her "Our Lost Diva".
She died childless and bequeathed her fortune to charitable organizations; the New York Veterinary Clinic alone received a million dollars.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Witness for the Defense ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the pages of the University of North Dakota
- ^ Elsie Ferguson on the Stanford University website
Web links
- Elsie Ferguson in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Elsie Ferguson site at Classic Images
- The Witness for the Defense Elsie Ferguson's only extant silent film
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ferguson, Elsie |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American film actress of the silent film era |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 19, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City , New York , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th November 1961 |
| Place of death | New London , Connecticut , United States |