Biography

From Wikipedia Elsie Louise Ferguson (August 19, 1883 – November 15, 1961) was an American stage and film actress. At the peak of her popularity, several film studios offered her a contract but she declined them all until 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. She also may have consented to films because she no longer had the protection of her beloved Broadway employers Henry B. Harris, who died on the Titanic in 1912, and Charles Frohman, who perished on the Lusitania in 1915. Producer and director Adolph Zukor then signed her to an 18-film, three-year contract.