Enigmatic Elsie Ferguson

 

   

"It is to convention that woman owes her ability to act, that is if she is to be congratulated on being able to feel one way and act another. She comes by this talent, if it may be called such, naturally. It is born with her. She almost never has to be taught to suppress her emotions. She does it instinctively -- when it best serves her purpose. She can affect indifference to a situation when she knows and feels that its outcome is one of the most vital importance to her. And she deserves little credit for being able to do so." 

-- Pictures and Picturegoer, 1924. 

 

Typically, when an actor or actress walks off the stage or screen they intend to leave their past behind them disregarding the possibility of making a 'comeback.' The pristine Broadway beauty and screen aristocrat, Elsie Ferguson, is one of the few stars I know of who had a reoccurring, let alone intriguing career. She went from theatre to motion pictures to theatre again and ultimately, pictures again -- which she apparently loathed. Elsie also attained a handful of different professions including her activity in animal welfare and promoting suffrage. 

Elsie was born on August 19, 1893, in Manhattan. She was the daughter of wealthy New York Attorney, Hiram Ferguson, and amateur actress, Amelia Ferguson. Naturally, her passion for dramatic arts unfolded at an early age. When she was seventeen, she had her first rendevous with a theatrical professional and made her stage debut alongside a bevy of other beautiful girls as members of the chorus in Liberty Belles. She had her first speaking role in The Girl From Kays, which opened at the Herald Square Theatre in 1903-'04. At this point in time, she was on the road to success; the rest is, as they say, history.  

On the stage, she displayed her beauty, talent, and versatility through the variety of roles she played. On the screen, she embodied elegance and sophistication leading to her sobriquet, 'The Aristocrat of the Screen.' Upon making her first appearance before the camera, she remarked, "It was the most painful thing I have ever known in life." Elsie's last silent film before returning to Broadway in 1925 was in the drama The Unknown Lover. After returning to motion pictures in 1930, she made her only talkie which would also be her final film appearance in Scarlet Pages. Her final Broadway appearance was in the 1943 play Outrageous Fortune. 

Following her fourth and final marriage to Victor Egan, she settled down to raise a farm in Connecticut while financing a second home in France. At the time she passed away, she was a widow with no existing heirs so her estate was demised to New York City's Animal Medical Center. 

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A winsome portrait of Elsie in her flaming youth

"I have no false pride. It doesn't bother me that I was a star, and am not one now. I'm still Elsie Ferguson. I didn't start my career as a star, did I? I started in the chorus and worked up to be a star. I had extreme youth then, but I had no experience, no understanding. What I have lost in that youth, I have gained in a thousand other ways. My only fear is that I came back a little too soon." -- The New Movie Magazine, 1930. One of the last interviews she gave. 

The opening lines of Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty" provide an inscription on her tombstone at Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, Connecticut.