Elsie Ferguson

Elsie Ferguson was interred in the Duck River Cemetery in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Bonita Granville has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6607 Hollywood Boulevard. 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. Granville died of cancer in Santa Monica, California. Ferguson made her final appearance on Broadway in 1943 at the age of 60 that met with critical acclaim. The couple remained married until Wrather's death in 1984. 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. She appeared in the film version of The Lone Ranger in 1956, and made her final screen appearance in a cameo role in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981).

Despite her wealth and fame and glamorous lifestyle, Elsie Ferguson's personal life had more than its share of turmoil. He bought the rights to both The Lone Ranger and Lassie characters and Granville worked as a producer for several film and television productions featuring these characters. 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. Her career gradually began to fade by the mid 1940s, and in 1947 she married Jack Wrather who had produced some of her films. In 1930 she made her first talkie that would also be her final film. She is also remembered for her starring role in the World War II anti-Nazism film Hitler's Children (1943). In 1925 she made one film only before returning to the Broadway stage. As a young adult, she was once again cast in supporting roles, often in prestigious films such as Now, Voyager (1942) as well as two Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney.

It is considered her best work in film. The film was a success and Granville reprised her role in three further films. One of these was the 1921 film entitled Forever in which she starred opposite the leading heartthrob of the day, Wallace Reid. In 1938 she played the girl-detective Nancy Drew for the first time. In 1921, she accepted another contract offer from Paramount Pictures to star in four films to be spread over a two-year period. Despite this success, the next few years brought her few opportunities to build her career although she continued to work. She fell in love with Paris and the French Riviera and within a few years bought a permanent home there. As that child, Granville was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1920, she traveled to the Middle East and Europe. Renamed These Three, it told the story of three adults (played by Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, and Joel McCrea) who find their lives almost destroyed by the malicious lies of an attention seeking child. Elsie Ferguson eventually followed the move west and bought a home in the hills of Hollywood, California. Over the next couple of years she played uncredited supporting roles in such films as Little Women (1933) and Anne of Green Gables (1934) before playing the role of Mary in the film adapation of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. Many of the films she agreed to do were because they were adaptations of stage plays with which she was familiar. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Granville was the daughter of stage actors, and made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage (1933). 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. Bonita Granville (February 2, 1923 – October 11, 1988) was an American film actress, and later in life a successful television producer.

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.