Aileen Pringle's favorite film was a mid-1920s silent based on a book by Elinor Glyn: Three Weeks (1924), sort of a "Lady Chatterly's Lover". She recalled in a 1980 telephone conversation: "The film was in good taste; some people thought the book was trashy". Anita Loos wrote in "A Girl Like I", the first volume of her autobiography, vaudeville comic Joe Frisco telling Glynn: "Leave me get this straight. You want to find some tramp that don't look like a tramp, to play that English tramp in your picture. But take it from me, that kind of tramp don't hang out in Hollywood". Aileen had spent her 20s married to Charles McKenzie Pringle, the son of Sir John Pringle, a Jamaica landowner and a member of the Privy and Legislative Councils of Jamaica. Aileen lived in Jamaica until she went on stage with George Arliss. When she began divorce proceedings against Pringle in 1926, Hollywood gossip columnists speculated she would marry H.L. Mencken. She did not remarry until 1944 when she became the bride of James M. Cain, author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". I opened my 1980 telephone conversation with Aileen by mentioning that the day before I had been reading her correspondence with Mencken at the New York Public Library. "But all the letters were destroyed", she said. I knew that Mencken had asked for all of his letters to her back at the time he became engaged to Sara Haardt. Aileen was the only woman who received such a request from Mencken at that time. "It was your letters from the late '30s and '40s I was reading", I told Aileen. "In one of them Mencken was urging you to write a book. Did you ever finish it?" "No. I got married instead." In a 1946 letter she wrote to Mencken. "If I had remained married to that psychotic Cain, I would be wearing a straitjacket instead of the New Look."
Date of Death 16 December 1989, New York City, New York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lester Matthews (June 6, 1900 - June 5, 1975) was an English actor born in Nottingham, England, UK. In his career, he made more than 180 appearances in film and on television. He was on occasion erroneously credited as Lester Mathews and especially in later years was sometimes known as Les Matthews. He died on the 6 June 1975 in Los Angeles, California. He was cremated. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. He appeared on television many times including an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour entitled "Completely Foolproof" (original air date: March 29, 1965).
Description above from the Wikipedia Lester Matthews, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Sarah Padden was a character actress in theater and vaudeville from Chicago, Illinois. She performed on stage in the early 20th century. She is noted for her expressive voice and for her psychological studies of the characters she portrayed. Her finest single-act performance was in The Clod, a stage production in which she played an uneducated woman who lived on a farm during the American Civil War. Padden was a featured player on the Orpheum Circuit, Inc.. She had a role in His Grace de Grammont, a romantic comedy by Clyde Fitch which came to the Park Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts in September 1905. The production starred Skinner and was based on the life of a chevalier in the court of Charles II. Padden appeared again with Skinner in a four-act play produced by Charles Frohman, The Honor of the Family, by Emile Fabre, which was presented in New Rochelle, New York in September 1907. Another of her theatrical parts was in Hell-Bent Fer Heaven, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Hatcher Hughes. It was performed at the Wilkes Orange Grove Theater (Majestic Theater), 845 South Broadway (Los Angeles), in November 1925. She was also an active screen actress from 1926 to 1958, appearing in 178 films and TV shows. In 1938, she played Ma Thayer in MGM's Rich Man Poor Girl, directed by Reinhold Schunzel and starring Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, and Lana Turner. Bill Harrison (Robert Young) a wealthy young businessman moves in with secretary girlfriend Joan Thayer's (Ruth Hussey) eccentric family to convince her they can make their marriage work. In 1941, she played wealthy spinster Aunt Cassandra ("Cassie") Hildegarde Denham in Murder by Invitation, directed by Phil Rosen and starring Wallace Ford and Marian Marsh. In this "closed room" murder comedy, after they unsuccessfully attempt to have her declared legally insane to gain control of her fortune, her nephews and nieces are invited to a week's visit at her mansion where they are murdered one by one.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Elliott (October 9, 1879 – November 15, 1951) was an American character actor who appeared in 102 films and TV shows from 1916 to 1951.
He was born Richard Robert Elliott in 1879 in Columbus, Ohio. Most of his main roles were in the silent era. In the sound era he mostly performed in supporting roles and bit parts. On the stage he originated the Sergeant O'Hara character opposite Jeanne Eagels in Somerset Maugham's play Rain (1922).
Active in films from 1916, Elliott played Detective Crosby in the 1928 feature Lights of New York, the first all-talking sound film. One of his most notable roles was that of a Yankee officer playing cards with Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) in the film Gone With the Wind; the officer says of Rhett, "It's hard to be strict with a man who loses money so pleasantly."
Robert Elliott was married to Ruth Thorp (1889–1971) from 1920 until his death in 1951, aged 72, in Los Angeles, California.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bess Flowers (November 23, 1898 – July 28, 1984) was an American actress. By some counts considered the most prolific actress in the history of Hollywood, she was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in over 700 movies in her 41 year career.
Born in Sherman, Texas, Flowers's film debut came in 1923, when she appeared in Hollywood. She made three films that year, and then began working extensively. Many of her appearances are uncredited, as she generally played non-speaking roles.
By the 1930s, Flowers was in constant demand. Her appearances ranged from Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford thrillers to comedic roles alongside of Charley Chase, the Three Stooges, Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.
She appeared in the following five films which won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it with You, All About Eve, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In each of these movies, Flowers was uncredited. Including these five movies, she had appeared in twenty-three Best Picture nominees in total, making her the record holder for most appearances in films nominated for the award. Her last movie was Good Neighbor Sam in 1964.
Flowers's acting career was not confined to feature films. She was also seen in many episodic American TV series, such as I Love Lucy, notably in episodes, "Lucy Is Enceinte" (1952), "Ethel's Birthday" (1955), and "Lucy's Night in Town" (1957), where she is usually seen as a theatre patron.
Outside her acting career, in 1945, Bess Flowers helped to found the Screen Extras Guild (active: 1946-1992, then merged with SAG), where she served as one of its first vice-presidents and recording secretaries.