Aileen Pringle

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

Filmography (76 Appearances)

The Wilderness Woman

TBA

Laura

1944

Since You Went Away

1944

Happy Land

1943

Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case

1943

Between Us Girls

1942

They Died with Their Boots On

1941

Appointment for Love

1941

The Night of Nights

1939

The Women

1939

Should a Girl Marry?

1939

Calling Dr. Kildare

1939

The Hardys Ride High

1939

Too Hot to Handle

1938

Nothing Sacred

1937

She's No Lady

1937

Thanks for Listening

1937

John Meade's Woman

1937

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

1937

Criminal Lawyer

1937

Wanted: Jane Turner

1936

Piccadilly Jim

1936

The Unguarded Hour

1936

Wife vs. Secretary

1936

Vanessa: Her Love Story

1935

Sons of Steel

1934

Once to Every Bachelor

1934

Jane Eyre

1934

Love Past Thirty

1934

By Appointment Only

1933

The Phantom of Crestwood

1932

The Age of Consent

1932

Police Court

1932

Convicted

1931

Murder at Midnight

1931

Subway Express

1931

Soldiers and Women

1930

Prince of Diamonds

1930

Puttin' on the Ritz

1930

Wall Street

1929

Night Parade

1929

A Single Man

1929

Dream of Love

1928

The Baby Cyclone

1928

Beau Broadway

1928

Wickedness Preferred

1928

Tea For Three

1927

Body and Soul

1927

Adam and Evil

1927

Life in Hollywood No. 7

1927

Tin Gods

1926

The Great Deception

1926

Camille: The Fate of a Coquette

1926

The Mystic

1925

A Thief in Paradise

1925

Wildfire

1925

Soul Mates

1925

1925 Studio Tour

1925

A Kiss in the Dark

1925

One Year to Live

1925

The Wife of the Centaur

1924

His Hour

1924

True As Steel

1924

Three Weeks

1924

Name the Man

1924

In the Palace of the King

1923

Don't Marry for Money

1923

The Tiger's Claw

1923

Souls for Sale

1923

The Christian

1923

My American Wife

1922

The Strangers' Banquet

1922

Oath-Bound

1922

Stolen Moments

1920

Earthbound

1920

The Cost

1920 Debut
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