Elsie Ferguson

Elsie Ferguson was interred in the Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Actress Claire Trevor, who was born in 1910, went to school with her, and claimed that she was a year older than Trevor. A very wealthy woman with no heirs, and a lover of animals, on her passing in 1961 she left a large part of her considerable estate to a variety of charities including several for animal welfare. There has been much speculation as to Goddard's age. Ferguson made her final appearance on Broadway in 1943 at the age of 60 that met with critical acclaim. Goddard settled in Switzerland, where she eventually died. In her will, she left $20 million to New York University. 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 Cap d'Antibes home on the Mediterranean Sea in the south of France. They remained married until his death in 1970.

Despite her wealth and fame and glamorous lifestyle, Elsie Ferguson's personal life had more than its share of turmoil. In 1958 Goddard married Erich Maria Remarque. Although her voice came across well enough, at age 47 she was well past her prime for fans who wanted to see her as the great youthful beauty she had once been. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1943 for So Proudly We Hail!, but her career faded in the 1950s, and she eventually moved to Europe. In 1930 she made her first talkie that would also be her final film. She starred in The Great Dictator (with Chaplin), made three comedies with Bob Hope: The Cat And The Canary, The Ghost Breakers, and Nothing But The Truth, three Cecil B. DeMille epics, NorthWest Mounted Police, Reap the Wild Wind and Unconquered, and The Diary of a Chambermaid (with Burgess Meredith, whom she eventually married). In 1925 she made one film only before returning to the Broadway stage. He cast her in Modern Times, but it wasn't until they separated, and she got a starring role in The Women, that she became a star (although she had been considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind).

It is considered her best work in film. They married in 1936 and divorced in 1942. One of these was the 1921 film entitled Forever in which she starred opposite the leading heartthrob of the day, Wallace Reid. In 1932, she met Charlie Chaplin, and they became a couple shortly afterwards. In 1921, she accepted another contract offer from Paramount Pictures to star in four films to be spread over a two-year period. In 1931 she went to Hollywood, where she appeared in several films, in small roles. She fell in love with Paris and the French Riviera and within a few years bought a permanent home there. She married Broadway writer Edgar James at 16, but divorced him four years later.

In 1920, she traveled to the Middle East and Europe. She became a fashion model when a child, and debuted with Florenz Ziegfeld at the age of 13. Elsie Ferguson eventually followed the move west and bought a home in the hills of Hollywood, California. Goddard was born in Whitestone Landing, New York. Many of the films she agreed to do were because they were adaptations of stage plays with which she was familiar. Paulette Goddard (born Pauline Marion Levy) (June 3, 1911 (although at least one document has 1905) - April 23, 1990) was an American actress. Continuing to play roles of elegant society women, Ferguson was quickly dubbed "The Aristocrat of the Silent Screen." But the aristocratic label was also because she was known as a difficult and sometimes arrogant personality to work with.

At the peak of her popularity, several film studios offered her a contract but she declined them all until the 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". Following this first film, Elsie Ferguson starred in two more films directed by Tourneur under a lucrative contract from Paramount Pictures that paid her $1,000 per day of filming. Ferguson, noted for her great beauty and as one of the "Park Avenue aristocrats," on one occasion is reputed to have sold $85,000.00 worth of bonds in less than an hour. During World War I, a number of Broadway stars organized a campaign to sell Liberty Bonds from the theatre stage prior to the performance as well as at highly publicized appearances at places such as the New York Public Library. In 1910 she spent time on the stage in London, England.

By 1909, she was a major Broadway star. Raised and educated in Manhattan, she became interested in the theater at a young age and made her stage debut at seventeen as a chorus girl in a musical comedy. Born Elsie Louise Ferguson in New York City, she was the only child of a successful attorney. Elsie Ferguson, born August 19, 1883 - died November 15, 1961, was an American stage and film actress.