Elsie Ferguson

Elsie Louise Ferguson (August 19, 1883 – November 15, 1961) was an American stage and film actress born in New York City, the only child of attorney Hiram Ferguson and his wife Amelia. Raised and educated in Manhattan, Ferguson developed an early interest in the theater and made her stage debut at age 17 as a chorus girl in a musical comedy. Her Broadway career spanned more than four decades, from 1901 to 1943.

Ferguson's early professional years included nearly two years as a cast member in The Girl from Kays, running from 1903 to 1905, and appearances in the musicals The Liberty Belles and Miss Dolly Dollars. In 1908, she served as leading lady to Edgar Selwyn in Pierre of the Plains. Her work during this period brought her under the guidance of several prominent producers, among them Charles Frohman, Klaw and Erlanger, Charles Dillingham, and Henry B. Harris. By 1909, she had established herself as a major Broadway star, taking the lead in Such a Little Queen. The following year she performed on the London stage. She went on to star in The First Lady in the Land, further cementing her reputation as a leading dramatic actress.

During World War I, Ferguson joined other Broadway performers in selling Liberty Bonds from theater stages and at public venues including the New York Public Library. On one occasion she is reported to have sold $85,000 worth of bonds in under an hour. Two of her longtime Broadway employers did not survive the war years: Henry B. Harris perished aboard the Titanic in 1912, and Charles Frohman died when the Lusitania sank in 1915.

Although multiple film studios had previously sought to sign her, Ferguson declined their offers until French director Maurice Tourneur approached her to play the lead in his 1917 silent film Barbary Sheep. Producer Adolph Zukor subsequently signed her to an eighteen-film, three-year contract at $5,000 per week. She starred in two additional films directed by Tourneur under a Paramount Pictures contract that paid her $1,000 per day of filming on top of her weekly salary. Her only fully surviving silent film is The Witness for the Defense (1919), co-starring Warner Oland. Brief footage of Ferguson also survives in Paramount's A Trip to Paramountown (1922) and The House That Shadows Built (1931). Her screen persona of elegant society women earned her the nickname "The Aristocrat of the Silent Screen." In 1921, she accepted a further Paramount contract for four films over two years, one of which was Forever, in which she starred opposite Wallace Reid.

During this period Ferguson purchased a home in the hills of Hollywood, California, and in 1920 traveled to the Middle East and Europe. She subsequently acquired a permanent residence on the French Riviera. Her last silent film was the 1925 drama The Unknown Lover. She returned to Broadway and starred in the 1929 stage production Scarlet Pages, which was later adapted into her first and only sound film of the same title in 1930, a picture now preserved in the Library of Congress. Reviewers described her speaking voice as pleasantly low-pitched with perfect diction.

Ferguson married four times. Following her fourth marriage, at age 51, she and her husband divided their time between a farm in Connecticut and her home in Cap d'Antibes. Her final Broadway appearance came in 1943, at age 60, when she appeared in Outrageous Fortune, a play written by her neighbor Rose Franken. Critics praised her performance as glowing and credited her with the charm and winning manner of old, though the production closed after eight weeks.

Ferguson died on November 15, 1961, at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut, having lived on an estate called White Gate Farms. She was interred at Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, Connecticut. A supporter of women's suffrage who discussed the cause in interviews, and an advocate for animal rights, she left a substantial portion of her estate to charitable organizations, including several dedicated to animal welfare.