Photoplay (Apr - Sep 1918)

THE RISE OF ELSIE FERGUSON From Chorus-girl to Star of Stage and Screen; but first Elsie rose, and rose By Harriette Underhill P kLEASE do not ask me if I like motion pictures and oh, please do not say, 'How did you come to go on the stage?' How banal for me to reply that I adore motion pictures and I went on the stage because I wished to." And Elsie Ferguson started looking bored. Now if there is any one. in the world who can look bored when she has a mind to, it is Elsie Ferguson, and that is not the worst of it either. The fact is that when she looks bored, she IS bored, and so when she turned those inscrutible eyes on us we trembled lest the interview be closed before it was fairly begun. And then something happened and Miss Ferguson forgot all about being bored. She began to shiver, and small wonder, for the temperature of the studio was away below the freezing point and Director Kaufman and all of his aides wore heavy overcoats. One cannot be haughty when one's teeth are chattering and so presently after Miss Ferguson had been wrapped in furs she began to warm up and she talked. We never had intended to ask her those questions anyway, because we knew all about it. The rise of Elsie Ferguson was interesting enough to have occupied our attention for some time and we knew how, when and where she went on the stage. It was like this — once upon a time there was a little girl who was ever so silent but who thought a great deal. This little girl was not very pretty and so by that token her parents should have known that she was destined to be a great beauty. They should have seen that that long, fine, yellow hair would look like a halo when little Elsie wore it up on top of her head instead of hanging down her back; that the blue eyes with their peculiar slant had an appealing wistfulness which contradicted the rather scornful mouth and the piquant nose. But parents ofttimes become inured to the fascinations of their offspring and so it was with Elsie's mamma. She laughed at her shy little daughter's timidly expressed plans for her future and sent her off to school, confident in Elsie's unfailing tractableness; and this is what happened. Fireside-fancies, or "the great actress in a pensive mood?" Well, no — she s just obliging the photographer. Eisie had a girl frienu who also had histrionic ambitions, only this girl had a letter of introduction to a manager and only wanted Elsie to go along with her to give her courage. Now it so happened that this manager was a man of perspicacity, and when he saw Miss Ferguson, who was tall, slender, blonde and fourteen, he asked her if she too did not want to go on the stage. She eagerly assented, and after that, when her mother believed that she was safe in school, she was in reality dancing and singing like mad, trying to compete with fifty other girls who also were rehearsing for the chorus of "The Belle of New York." It was not until the night before the show opened that the news leaked out, and then Elsie's mamma was torn with conflicting emotions. She was grieved at her little daughter's duplicity and delighted with her pluck, so into "The Belle of New York" chorus went Elsie, and she not only played in New York but she also went on tour. Miss Ferguson has since confessed that it made her quite unhappy to be in the "merry, merry," for she was not what the other girls called ''a good fellow" and she was pretty much alone. "I know I was not a good chorus girl," said Miss Ferguson, laughingly, ''or at least I was a good chorus girl, for I took myself and my life very seriously." "The great moment in my life was when I was given my first speaking part. I think the line was: 'It is cooler in 41